


Strength of Spirit

by exclamation



Category: The Sentinel
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Dubious Consent, First Time, M/M, Pre-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-07-09
Updated: 2013-08-14
Packaged: 2017-12-18 05:56:50
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 13
Words: 25,288
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/876397
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/exclamation/pseuds/exclamation
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>As a young anthropologist, Blair Sandburg was sent to a conference in Peru. Guerrilla activities led to him and his group being stranded in the jungle and captured by a local tribe. The tribe's Shaman senses a power in Blair that could have huge significance for stranded army Ranger Jim Ellison.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Day One

The ropes bit into Blair’s wrists as he was herded along through the rainforest. The natives that surrounded them on all sides were armed with bows and blow darts. Blair didn’t want to test out the theory that the locals used poison, so he hurried along with the others of his group. This was not how he’d expected his trip to Peru to go. A prestigious conference, a few days to visit the local museums, another few at an archaeological site and then a quick trip by helicopter back to the city for the flight home. 

They just hadn’t planned on being shot down by guerrillas. Trying to get away from them after the crash, they’d ended up running straight into a group of the indigenous people, who didn’t seem too happy to have company. Which was how Blair had ended up a prisoner, along with three others from the university and their nervous pilot. 

Blair would have spent this time studying their guards, trying to learn what he could as quickly as possible, but it was made difficult by the pilot babbling along. 

“We should have tried to fight rather than letting them take us back to stick in a stew pot.” 

“There’s no evidence that the indigenous people are cannibals,” said Professor Carlson, the leader of this messed up expedition. 

“Besides, humans taste better roasted than stewed,” put in Ashley, the archaeologist in the group. If Blair’s hands weren’t tied, he might have slapped the guy. Ashley had been making stupid jokes for the whole trip and right now Blair was as keen as their pilot to hear comments about how he might get cooked. 

The other member of their group was Malcolm, the political science representative, muttering under his breath that he didn’t want to die. Supposedly, they’d been among the university’s best and brightest, representing Rainier at the conference. Blair was now secretly wondering if the Chancellor had been hoping they’d get shot down by guerrillas so that she could be rid of them all. Blair considered himself an easy-going guy, but after spending nearly two weeks in their company, he’d be happy to never see any of them again. 

“They probably just want to make certain we’re not a threat to the tribe,” Blair said. 

“And how do we do that when no one speaks mumbo jumbo?” asked Adrian, the pilot. 

“Communication can be established through different means,” Blair said. “Drawings. Mime. Plus, I know a few words of some of the tribal dialects. I’ve done some reading into the mythology of the region. There are some fascinating-“ 

“I don’t give a damn about mythology!” said Adrian. “I want to know if you can tell these primitives to let us go or help us find a radio.” 

“Maybe. Given enough time.” 

“Well isn’t that great.” 

“The university will know we’re missing,” said Malcolm. “Right? They’ll send someone to look for us. Won’t they?” 

In different circumstances, Blair would have loved to be a guest of one of the local tribes, in the heart of the land where the Sentinel mythology had sprung from. He would have been thrilled to learn about their ways and, more importantly, to see if any of them displayed the heightened senses that the stories talked about. He could actually have a chance to see if the myths were something more than that. But he’d had liked to do it as part of a planned expedition with colleagues he could actually stand. 

Their captors herded them into a village built around a large clearing. Wooden huts were constructed in the shelter of the larger trees, with an open space for fire pits and cooking. There was also a cage in the middle of the clearing. It was made of a series of wooden posts, each as thick as Blair’s arm, driven deep into the ground. The cage was perhaps five metres across and currently empty, just an expanse of hard soil within the circle of posts. There was a gap between two of the posts, through which Blair and the others were gently shoved. Then one of the locals, a tall man in little more than a loincloth and a lot of body paint, placed a latticework of smaller branches over the gap and tied it into place. 

It was hardly a high security prison. Blair could probably kick down that latticework, but the locals were still there on the other side of the bars, armed and watching. 

Another man approached the cage. He was dressed much the same at the others. He had feathers woven into his long hair and a symbol that looked like some sort of bird painted across his chest. He spoke to those who had captured the little group. Blair listened carefully, but was only able to make out a few words: forest, warriors. There were a few more words that sounded familiar, but nothing that he could string together into any sort of sense. 

“Go on, Sandburg, say something,” said Adrian. 

Blair dredged his memory, calling up what he hoped was a negative and the word for warriors. The new arrival looked at him and then said something too quickly for Blair to catch. 

“I don’t understand,” Blair said. 

The local considered, looked at the guards, and then spoke again, slower this time, each word deliberately formed. It was something about danger, warriors and the tribe. Blair didn’t completely follow. He tried simply saying the word he hoped meant friend. He hoped that this guy understood what Blair was trying to say. 

The man beckoned Blair to come stand by the bars. Blair did so, thinking that any sign of cooperation here had to be a good thing. The man looked at him for a long time, staring into Blair’s eyes. Then the guy drew a bone knife. 

Blair started to take a step back, the others in the group yelling out in protest, but the guard reached through the bars to grab Blair’s arm. He gently but firmly hauled Blair back to the bars and turned him round. 

The knife sliced through the ropes at his wrists. Blair drew a slightly shaking breath. For a second there, he’d thought he was about to die. Instead, he turned back to face the man with the bird on his chest and smiled. 

“Thank you.” If the words weren’t understood, the sentiment was. The man nodded and then turned to walk away. The guard folded his arms and kept watch. 

Blair rubbed some life into his sore wrists and turned to his companions, who were still bound. He didn’t have anything to cut with, so he had to work the knots loose. 

***

Jim Ellison, known as Enqueri to the Chopec tribe, walked back to the village with his kill over his shoulder. He preferred hunting alone, listening for the sounds of the animals, spotting them from the distance without having to explain it to anyone else and risk frightening off his quarry. Incacha didn’t like it. He insisted that Jim should have a guide with him, but Jim could always slip away. 

As he returned to the village, he knew something was different. Different scents in the air, different voices on the wind. One of the Chopec warriors greeted him at the edge of the village, saying that Incacha needed to speak to him. Jim handed over his kill to be prepared for the evening meal and he went to Incacha’s hut. As he walked through the trees, he caught strains of English coming from the main clearing. 

“No one has hurt us yet and the fact that they let us undo the ropes is a good sign.” 

“The fact that they’ve got us in a cage is a bad one.” 

“There’s no need to panic,” said the first voice. 

“I’m not panicking,” said another. “I just don’t like the way that guy keeps looking at me.” This voice rose slightly in volume, “What the hell are you looking at you damn, primitive faggot?” 

“I think you should apologise,” the first voice, calm and reasonable. 

“What the hell for? It’s not like this backwards bastards can understand a word we’re saying.” 

“I’m sure they understand the sentiment and you insulting them isn’t going to help us get out of here.” 

Jim reached Incacha’s hut and pushed aside the skin which covered the doorway. Incacha was inside, sitting cross-legged on a rush mat. He had a series of wooden bowls in front of him and was grinding a mixture of herbs into one of them. 

When Jim spoke, it was in Quechua, the language of the Chopec tribe. 

_“We have prisoners?”_ he asked. 

_“There metal bird crashed in the forest. We need to know if they work with the enemy.”_

_“Do you want me to talk to them?”_

_“No,”_ Incacha said, _“I want you to listen. Their words may lie, but not if they think we do not understand them.”_

_“I understand. I listen as they talk to one another. I learn who they are.”_

Incacha nodded. He returned his attention to the bowls, taking a small sprinkling of powder from one and adding it to the mixture in the central bowl. 

_“What is that?”_ Jim asked. 

_“It is for the Shaman.”_

Jim took that as meaning it was something he wasn’t supposed to know about. He left Incacha to his work. Shaman rituals were a mixture of mystery and mysticism that Jim didn’t fully understand and wasn’t supposed to. He left the hut and walked towards the clearing, finding himself a sheltered place in the shadows of a great tree. He had a clear view of the cage but knew it would be difficult for them to see him unless they had Sentinel sight. Jim sat on the ground and surveyed the group in the cage. 

There were five men, the oldest probably no more than forty. All white. They didn’t look like guerrillas. They didn’t look like US soldiers either. Jim, along with the locals, had been holding the Chopec pass for a little over a year now and there had been a lot of fighting in the area. When Incacha had mentioned a downed aircraft, Jim had hopes that it would include his replacements. But the group in civilian dress were clearly not soldiers. The oldest of them was a little overweight and one of the younger ones had a mass of curly hair down to his shoulders. 

One of the others, a tall, wiry guy, was complaining loudly about being thirsty and wishing that the, “Fucking heathen bastards,” would give him something to drink. 

“We’re all thirsty,” said the long haired guy, “but shouting and throwing around insults isn’t going to get us anywhere.” 

“It’s not like these primitives understand.” 

“I understand and I’m sick of hearing it. If you can’t say something polite, shut up.” 

Jim grinned. The long-haired guy was almost a foot shorter than the other, but he didn’t seem at all intimidated. Jim found himself almost liking the guy. 

“Sandburg’s right,” said the older man. “We should be trying to communicate in a calm and civilised manner.” 

“Civilised,” snorted Mr Politeness. 

Jim listened a while longer. The only thing he’d picked up was that the long-haired guy was called Sandburg and that the guy he’d mentally dubbed Mr Politeness was a serious prick. Jim did think it might be easier to go up to them and just ask who they were, but Incacha was the tribe’s Shaman and that meant Jim should listen to him. 

Inside the cage, one of them, a scrawny kid who was nervously fidgeting constantly, was asking if the tribe was planning on starving them. Jim decided to show them some pity. He gave a low whisper and waved over one of the tribeswomen, telling her to take some water to the group in the cage. He specifically pointed out Mr Politeness and told her not to give him any of the water. He wasn’t going to die of thirst for a while yet and it might help get the point across that his companion was trying to make. 

Jim watched the woman take a bucket of water and a drinking bowl over to the cage. She offered the bowl one at a time to the occupants, who drank gladly. Then she turned and walked away before Mr Politeness could take his turn. 

“Hey! Bitch! Get back here! Give me some of the fucking water!” 

“Maybe she doesn’t like being called a bitch,” suggested Sandburg cheerfully. 

“You think you’re so fucking smart, don’t you, Sandburg? Well you focus that brain of yours on getting us out of here.” 

“Well, I think it’s highly unlikely that they’d have gone through all this simply to kill us. My guess is that they just don’t know what to make of us.” 

“Soup?” suggested the other of the group, with a grin at Mr Fidget who turned a shade paler. 

“Thank you, Ashley,” said Blair. “They’re not going to eat us. I think if we can demonstrate that we’re not a threat to them, they’ll probably let us go.” 

“Sandburg’s right,” said the older guy. “If we can show politeness and cooperation, then they’ll have no reason to hurt us. Meanwhile, the university will know something’s gone wrong and send someone after us.” 

So Jim had his answer. They were from a university. Looking at them, he was more willing to believe them a group of lost nerds than insurgents. He listened a while longer, while the night started to fall over the jungle. The tribeswomen prepared food, a mixture of meat and root vegetables, at the cooking fires and Jim watched one of them take a portion to the group in the cage. Mr Politeness grabbed some first, determined not to be left out this time. Everything he’d heard had Jim convinced that these really were a group from a university, here entirely by accident. 

Incacha came up to where Jim sat and asked for his findings. 

_“They did not mean to be here,”_ Jim said. _“They are not warriors. They are of a group that seeks knowledge. I don’t think they mean any harm to the tribe.”_

_“Good. I am glad they are not enemies. Still, it would probably be unsafe for them to have free range of the village.”_

_“Some of them, perhaps, should be watched.”_ Jim said. 

_“But some should not?”_ Incacha was smiling in his most irritating manner, as though he knew something Jim didn’t. 

_“One of them, the long-haired one, speaks of respect.”_

Incacha smiled again. 

_“For tonight, they can remain where they are,”_ he said. _“Sleep, Enqueri. Others will keep watch tonight. You will need your sleep tomorrow.”_

Jim knew better than to ask what he meant by that. He never knew what was going on inside Incacha’s head half the time. Jim just grabbed some food from the cooking fires and went to his own hut, a small and flimsy construction on the outskirts of the village. It was tradition that warriors built their own huts to show that they were men. Jim had built this after a few days with the tribe and its lopsided structure showed his lack of experience with the activity. The men of the tribe had laughed but the hut had stood and it still stood a year later. He lay down on his sleeping mat and shuffled inside a standard issue sleeping bag that was one of the few bits of supply he still had. 

Even here, he could hear the conversations happening inside the cage. Jim drifted off to sleep, listening to Sandburg talk about the cultural significance of the shared meal.


	2. Day Two

Blair woke, stiff and sore from spending the night sleeping on the hard ground. The jungle had been an orchestra of insect noises that shifted with the dawn into a chorus of bird cries. The sharp calls didn’t deserve to be called song. Around the clearing, the village was stirring. Men and women were moving about purposefully, children running or fighting between them. A group of older women were building up the cooking fires. A group of young men set out into the jungle, weapons on their backs. 

There were still armed men watching the group in the cage. One was a kid who didn’t look much older than fourteen or fifteen, standing fiercely upright with a determined expression that was almost comical. Blair guessed that guarding the dangerous foreigners was this kid’s first real job as a warrior. 

On the other side of the cage, Adrian was awake and already complaining that the “fucking native bastards” hadn’t thought to give them a blanket. Blair attempted to ignore him, looking instead at the daily life of the village. Everyone seemed to have a job, a purpose. Even kids were going off into the jungle with clay water pots or with roughly woven baskets. 

A man approached the cage. Blair thought that it was the guy he’d tried to talk to the day before. Blair got to his feet, a little stiffly, as he approached. This man said something to the nearest guard and then beckoned Blair over to the latticework that covered the cage’s entrance. With some very firm gestures from his bow, the guard got the rest of the group to back away towards the other side of the cage. Blair wasn’t sure if being singled out was a good sign or a bad one, but he gave a calm and polite smile as the man undid the ropes holding the latticework in place. 

The man gestured for Blair to come out of the cage, which he did calmly. 

“What about the rest of us?” Adrian demanded. He took a step forward, stopped by a sharp word and the guard tightening his grip on the bow. The local tied the latticework back in place. Blair guessed that this guy was someone important to the village, maybe a top warrior or a tribal chief. He gestured for Blair to follow him, leading the way to a large hut on the edge of the clearing. The hut was built of wooden posts with cracks stuffed with mud, with a roof made of branches of dried leaves. The doorway was blocked off by a curtain of animal skin that the man pushed aside. 

The dark space within had a small fire of dried twigs. The small amount of smoke rose to an opening in the leafy roof. All around the walls were hung little bunches of dried leaves. Bundles wrapped in animal skin were stacked on the floor beneath them along with wooden bowls filled with berries and powders. Blair changed his assessment and decided that this man was some sort of tribal wise man, probably the closest they had to a doctor. 

The man gestured for Blair to sit on the earth floor beside the small fire. The local then collected a few items from around the hut and sat down across from him. Blair watched him put a flat metal dish over the fire, balanced on three legs, and then, once the metal had warmed up, dropped a dollop of what was probably animal fat on it. The man worked quickly and skilfully, throwing in chopped vegetables, berries, nuts and pinches of various leaves. The man moved the mixture around with a spatula to ensure thorough cooking then he handed the spatula over to Blair. Blair kept stirring while his host mixed water with a brown flour to create a dough. He beat the dough out flat and split it into two squares. He had Blair scoop the vegetable mix into the middle of the squares and then deftly folded them into little parcels. He flung them both onto the hot pan to cook the dough. 

The local man worked efficiently, creating the meal with a practiced manner. It smelt delicious and Blair was fighting to keep from drooling at the prospect of breakfast. They hadn’t eaten much yesterday and he could do with a hot meal now. 

His host served the dough parcels onto wooden plates and offered one to Blair, along with a drinking bowl of water, that he filled from a clay pot by the door. 

“Thank you,” Blair said with a smile, hoping that his meaning was understood, even if his words weren’t. He received a smile and a nod from his host who gestured for Blair to eat. 

The meal was as good as Blair had hoped. The dough was dense and moist, with a slightly nutty flavour. The juices from the filling soaked through, a pleasant mixture of tastes, some sharp, some sweet. Blair ate it gladly, hoping that the others in the cage were getting something to eat as well. 

When the meal was over, the local carefully moved aside the cooking pan and took the two plates. He rinsed them slightly with a sparing amount of water from the clay pot, scattering the dirty water on the ground outside. Then he put them away. Blair guessed that was what counted for hygiene around here. 

The man sat down again across the fire from Blair. Blair decided this was his opportunity to attempt communication again. He gestured towards himself. 

“Blair,” he said. “Blair Sandburg.” 

He gestured towards his host, who looked confused. Blair attempted this again, pointing at himself and saying his name, then pointing towards his host. The man got it this time and smiled, pointing to his chest. 

“Incacha,” the man said. 

Blair pointed at the man, “Incacha.” 

That got a smile. The man repeated it again, then gestured to Blair saying, “Blairsanbur.” The sounds ran together into one word, but Blair nodded and smiled. So they had names. This was a start. He just wasn’t sure where he went from there. 

He tried with mime to ask if the others had been fed. He gestured in the direction of the cage and mimed eating. When that yielded confusion, he tried drawing a series of lines in the dirt floor to indicate the bars. He then stood and pushed aside the skin curtain over the door, pointing directly at the cage. 

“Have they eaten?” Blair asked and mimed eating again. Incacha seemed to understand. He called to one of the villagers and spoke briefly. As Blair watched, the woman retrieved some slightly withered-looking fruit and took it over to the cage. So it seemed the others weren’t getting five star treatment, but at least they weren’t being starved. Somehow Blair didn’t think that Adrian would get the hint that politeness might be better than yelling insults at getting him what he wanted. 

This necessity taken care of, Incacha waved Blair back into the hut. He picked up a small metal pot and filled it with water. He arranged more small branches on the fire and then set the pot in the heart of the blaze. Blair hadn’t seen much metal in use here. The fact that Incacha had two metal items in his hut said a great deal about his status. As the water boiled, Incacha selected a few leaves from some of the bundles and tossed them into the water. Blair waited for Incacha to finish the brew and dip a drinking bowl in. He offered the bowl to Blair. 

Blair noticed that Incacha didn’t seem about to drink himself. Hopefully that was because this was a local custom and not because Incacha was about to feed him something poisonous. It was unlikely that they’d have given him a good meal only to kill him, so Blair assumed the drink was safe and he didn’t want to annoy hosts who had the ability to kill him. 

Blair raised the drinking bowl to his lips and swallowed a mouthful of the bitter liquid. It had an aftertaste like over-brewed tea, but Incacha gestured again for Blair to drink. He managed to empty the bowl, hoping that there wouldn’t be a second helping. Thankfully, Incacha took the bowl away. 

Then it got slightly weird. The world took on a fuzzy quality, like he was looking at everything through warped glass. Incacha knelt in front of Blair and put a hand on either side of Blair’s face. He stared into Blair’s eyes from about two inches away. Blair thought this all really creepy but wasn’t sure how to say that. He also thought about how staring into someone’s eyes was supposed to be a romantic gesture and maybe Incacha was just trying way too hard to be flirtatious. That thought struck Blair as extremely funny and he started giggling. 

It was only when Incacha turned into a wolf that Blair realised he was probably high. 

What the hell was a wolf doing in a jungle anyway? 

***

Jim listened to Sandburg’s faltering attempts at communication. At points, he wondered about going into Incacha’s hut and just translating, but Incacha wanted to keep the fact someone here spoke English a secret for a while longer. 

Jim had worked out that Sandburg didn’t particularly like the others in his group, particularly Mr Politeness, who’d been swearing and throwing insults around again this morning. Still, Sandburg was making sure that they were given food. The more Jim saw of him, the more he liked the guy. He was polite and calm, despite the fact he was frequently getting weapons pointed in his direction. He was respectful to Incacha and protective of his colleagues. His attempts at conversation though had Jim fighting laughter. 

Jim was outside the hut, but he recognised the scents of the vision tea that Incacha was brewing. He shut down his senses rapidly. If he wasn't careful, just sniffing at that stuff could have a similar effect to downing an entire pot. Apparently his senses made him sensitive to the spirit world. Jim just thought they made him more susceptible to hallucinogens. 

He hoped Sandburg knew what he was getting into. He looked like a stereotypical stoner so there was a good chance that this wouldn’t be his first experience. Incacha believed that the vision tea could let him see a person’s soul. From the giggling going on inside the hut, Sandburg’s soul was a cheerful one. 

When the giggling turned to a whimper of fear, Jim wanted to rush in and make sure he was safe, even though he knew that whatever Sandburg was seeing would be a creation of his mind. It was down to Incacha to protect him in this. Jim had enough to focus on in the physical world. 

After a while, the giggling returned and then faded. Jim heard Sandburg’s breathing slip slowly into sleep. Incacha emerged from the hut and sought out Jim. 

_"He has a strong spirit,"_ Incacha said. 

_"Does this mean you will let the others out?”_ Jim asked. 

_“No. They might interfere. Blairsanbur will take the spirit walk.”_

_“Do you want me to explain what to expect?”_ Jim knew how unnerving the spirit walk could be. He’d gone through it after about a week with the tribe and he hadn’t known enough of the language to understand what was going on. 

Incacha shook his head, _“He will make his walk without a guide. He must not know what to expect.”_

_“You said it was dangerous to go into the spirit world without a guide.”_ Jim’s tone was close to being an accusation. He’d heard stories of people who delved in the world of spirits without due care and gone mad, their minds separated from reality forever. 

_“I believe he has the potential to be a guide, but this must be put to the test. We must see if he can guide his own walk without assistance. You may watch over him to draw him back to his body if he becomes lost, but you must not warn him or aid him in his spirit journey.”_

Jim knew it wouldn’t be easy, not just in a spiritual sense. Sandburg was new to this tribe and its customs. He wouldn’t understand why he was being put through this. Incacha obviously saw Jim’s reluctance. He placed a hand on Jim’s arm and gave him a look of reassurance. 

_“His spirit is strong,”_ Incacha said, _“his soul is filled with joy and wonder. I trust that he will walk this path to light.”_

_“I hope so,”_ Jim said. Then he set off into the jungle. He wanted the calm quiet of the hunt, because if he was still around the village when Sandburg woke up, Jim might be tempted to disobey Incacha and warn him about the trials ahead of him. 

***

Blair woke feeling like he had a hangover. His head was pounding, his mouth had a weird, fuzzy texture and his stomach was apparently staging an uprising against the rest of his body. He opened his eyes. He was lying somewhere dark and warm, but bright light was glaring around a tattered curtain, searing his eyelids. He blinked a few times, letting the pain diminish and his memories assert themselves. 

He was in Incacha’s hut. Presumably he’d been left to sleep off the effects of the mind-whammy brew he’d drunk. There didn’t appear to be wolves walking through the walls, so he presumed he was normal again. He looked at his watch, forcing the numbers to unblur. Nearly mid-day. He must have been out for three hours at least. 

He found his feet, leaning on the wall of the hut, and stumbled for the skin curtain. The world outside was definitely too bright but Blair’s head felt better with each passing moment. He paused in the doorway to dip a drinking bowl into the pot of water, hoping he wasn’t making some huge breach of etiquette. The drink definitely helped and he emerged into the village feeling almost human again. 

In the cage, Ashley noticed Blair’s emergence and got the attention of the other prisoners. Blair headed in that direction, planning on filling them in about his attempts at communication. The man currently guarding the cage had other plans. He positioned himself between Blair and the cage indicating very clearly that Blair wasn’t to get too close. 

"What's going on?" asked Professor Carlson. 

“I have no idea,” Blair said. “I was given breakfast and some sort of hallucinatory tea.” 

“Always figured you for a stoner,” said Ashley. 

"Are you going to get the rest of us out of here?” Adrian demanded. 

“I’m working on it,” Blair said. First, he’d need to work out why he’d been let out of the cage. He looked around for Incacha but he was nowhere in sight. Blair started to explore the rest of the village, looking for Incacha, an explanation or just something to give him an insight into his situation. Whichever direction he walked, he would only get a little way into the trees when a local warrior would appear to block his path. Blair didn’t want any trouble, so he would turn back, meaning he saw little beyond the main clearing. 

The huts were of various sizes. Some appeared to hold groups of people, others were clearly individual dwellings. They were also built with a vast variety of skills. Some were sturdy buildings, others looked like they might fall over in a strong breeze. Most of the village’s activity appeared to be in the open air, around the cooking fires or in little clusters of people around the clearing. He received a lot of curious glances from the members of the tribe but no one approached him with answers or instructions. He decided the best thing to do was to act as a good anthropologist. The more he learned about the way of life, the more likely he was to understand why he’d been let out of the cage. 

He approached a group of half a dozen older villagers, who were sitting on logs and tree stumps around one of the cooking fires. They were making nets, talking as they did so. The conversation died momentarily as Blair took a seat on a lump of wood, but soon they resumed talking again, there words largely unintelligible to him. He watched their hands. Some were taking long strands of a creeper plant, peeling off the bark and twisting the fibrous innards into chord. Others were knotting the resulting chords into nets. Blair decided that the first task would be easier for an amateur. He picked up a fresh piece of creeper from a pile on the ground and started working. 

The others paused their conversation again, looking at him suspiciously. Blair kept his expression neutral and started doing what he’d seen the others doing, pressing the creeper strand between his hands and rubbing it until the pressure cracked the outer bark. Then he peeled away strips of bark. It was more fiddly than he would have expected. His peelings weren’t the long strips that the others managed, but little scraps. Still, he was clearing a stretch. 

As he worked, the conversation resumed between the tribes people. They largely ignored Blair, except when a woman reached out to take his stripped off bark pieces and threw them into the fire. She gave him a smile as he took the next piece and tossed it into the fire. 

Once his creeper strand was clear of bark, Blair tried to imitate them and create the strand of rope. They did this by folding the strand over and twisting it, then twisting that with other twisted strands, until what was left was a solid piece of rope. When Blair tried it, he got a lumpy mess that was tying itself in knots in places and coming unravelled in others. After some minutes of this, an older man took Blair’s attempt from him and threw it in the fire. The man then handed Blair another strand of creeper to clear of bark. 

After perhaps half an hour, Blair had finished de-barking the creepers. The others were all busy turning the strands into rope or adding it to the nets. He left them to it, getting a few smiles and words that he hoped were thanks as he left. 

He moved around the clearing, looking for others to help. He spent much of that afternoon doing minor tasks with the locals. They wouldn’t let him do much that required skill or anything involving a sharp implement, but Blair made himself useful repairing cracks in hut walls with a thick mud mixture, or carrying water pots from a nearby stream and emptying the pots into big metal pans on the cooking fires. It seemed that the locals boiled all their water before drinking, something not all tribes had learned about. 

As the afternoon wore on, hunters and foragers emerged from the trees and work began on creating the meal. Blair was surprised at the amount of food being prepared, but he helped out where he could, from stirring pots to grinding nuts into a sort of flour. He still didn’t understand most of what was said to him, but he got smiles and nods from people and many would pause their work to demonstrate tasks if he was struggling. 

When Blair went near the cage, he caught snippets of conversation from within. Adrian thought that Blair was wasting time. 

Sometime in the late afternoon, Incacha returned. He spoke to several of the villagers that Blair had worked with and glances came frequently in his direction. Blair pretended to ignore this and kept working. 

A few hours later, it seemed the entire tribe was gathered around the clearing. The food was being shared without formality. There was a festival air. Someone brought out drums made of animal hide over wooden frames and people would take their turns at playing between portions of food. The drumbeats were infectious. Multiple rhythms seemed to resonate deep inside Blair. Some of the tribe started dancing and there was a lot of laughter. 

People kept pressing food on Blair. He was offered something a bit like bread, but more nutty in flavour. He was given fruits and vegetables. They gave him meat from animals he couldn’t identify. He was even given a handful of small, black items that turned out to be fried insects. They were surprisingly tasty, in a crunchy way. He ate to the point of fullness, but people kept putting food into his hands. He wondered if it would be considered rudeness to refuse or interpreted as greed if he ate. In the end, he just ate what he was given because the locals didn’t want to accept a refusal. 

A call cut across the commotion. A boy, who’d climbed high in one of the tallest trees, yelled out a word. Blair thought it was the word for night. 

Incacha snatched a piece of meat from Blair’s hands. 

Silence fell over the clearing. The drumming stopped. All conversation faded. From the golden quality of the light, Blair guessed that the sun had set, the boy in the tree calling out the precise moment of the end of the day. 

Blair was acutely aware that everyone was staring at him.


	3. Night Two

Hands reached out for Blair, grasping at his t-shirt. He tried to step backwards, but there were people behind him. He tried to pull out of the grasp, but more hands were lifted the hem up, exposing his torso. 

“Wait. No. Stop.” Blair’s protests fell on deaf ears and the locals hauled his t-shirt up and over his head. As Blair tried to get out of the way, he heard the fabric rip. Then the t-shirt pulled free, they hauled it off his arms without ever letting go. Then they moved on to his trousers. 

Blair increased his struggles. They were clearly ignoring his refusals so he needed to put on more than a polite show of objection. He kicked out as those around him, trying to twist his arms out of their grips. He yanked and writhed and didn’t worry too much about whether he hurt someone in his attempts to get out. 

But they held firm, forcing him down onto the hard earth where more hands could keep him pinned. Village warriors held him down by all four limbs while others worked at his flies, struggling briefly with the fastenings before pulling them down. Blair was yelling and struggling, the rough ground scraping against his skin as he tried to get free. Hands clung on with bruising intensity, pressing him against the earth as they yanked down his trousers and boxers, pulling off his shoes and socks. Around him, the other villagers watched the scene, with expressions ranging from curiosity to concern, but without making a move to help. Blair could hear the others from the university, yelling out their own protests as they saw what happened to him. 

Blair wished they couldn’t see. He didn’t want anyone to see what was about to happen. 

He lay, naked and exposed, pinned down by strong men. He felt a sick horror at what was surely to come and tears blurred his view of tree tops and darkening skies. 

Blair saw Incacha approaching and he tried to plead. 

“Don’t. Please, don’t,” he said. His mind went blank on the local language, but he didn’t think he’d be able to phrase the words for, “Please don’t rape me,” even if he was able to think clearly. Incacha was unmoved by Blair’s tears. He knelt on the ground beside Blair, loops of rope in his hands. 

Blair hoped that wasn’t the rope he’d helped to make. He felt physically ill at the thought that he might have been unknowingly complicit in this. 

Those who pinned him brought Blair’s hands together in front of him, without letting up the pressure on his torso. Incacha looped the rope around his wrists quickly and efficiently, tying Blair’s wrists securely. When he was finished, Blair’s hands were effectively trapped together, with a long trailing end of rope dangling free from the bound wrists. Then Incacha moved to Blair’s legs. As the villagers changed their hold, Blair managed to get one leg free enough to deliver a kick to a man’s stomach. The man gave a grunt of pain but then got hold of Blair’s leg again. The men held his legs up enough for Incacha to securely tie Blair’s ankles together, then his knees. There was another trailing end of rope dangling from the loops around his ankles. 

The ropes secure, the village warriors lifted Blair from the ground, carrying him from the main clearing. The other members of the tribe followed along, watching, as though this was all a show for them. 

There was a large tree just beyond the cluster of huts. It rose high and straight, with a network of roots stretching out, sometimes above the earth for a time before delving down into it. The warriors dumped Blair on the ground between two of the outstretched roots. The act no doubt added more bruises to his growing collection. 

They forced him to his knees between the roots of the tree. Blair had stopped yelling now, his throat sore and rough, but he couldn’t stop the slow flow of tears at this humiliation. 

Incacha took the trailing end of rope from between Blair’s feet. He tied the rope around the exposed tree root, passing the rope between root and earth. Then he took the end of rope from Blair’s wrists, passing it under another tree root by Blair’s knees, before tying it off on another, where Blair couldn’t hope to reach the knots. 

The warriors let go of their holds then. Blair struggled against the ropes, but realised how effectively he was trapped. He had very little range of motion on his hands, certainly not enough to reach the knots holding either his hands or feet in place. He could shift a little, but not enough to get free. 

His fear was beginning to fade into confusion. There was nothing sexual about what was happening, despite Blair’s nakedness. The fact that the entire tribe, young and old, were seeing his nudity was still humiliating, but the only way anyone had touched him was to hold him in place. The way he was bound was in fact a strong indicator that they weren’t expecting anything sexual of him. So why the hell were they doing this? 

Incacha brought out another length of rope. This one, he looped around Blair’s neck, causing a spike of fear again. Blair didn’t dare struggle as Incacha tied the rope into a noose around Blair’s neck, taking surprising care to keep Blair’s hair free from the knots. He then passed a trailing end of rope over a branch above Blair’s head. He tied it off, leaving very little slack. Blair was still in a kneeling position, sitting back on his heels, held there by the ropes around his wrist and ankles, but the rope around his neck forced him to sit with his back straight. He could raise himself a little off his lower legs, but not very far before the ropes around his wrists pulled taught. He couldn’t shift to sit on the ground without strangling himself. So all he could do was sit there on his heels, waiting for some explanation of what the hell was going on. 

The tribe were still watching. Men, women and children all stood around him under the trees. Someone had brought the drums round and now some of the older tribe members were beating a rhythm against the skins. 

As Blair waited, naked and scared, a little girl broke through the crowd around him. She put her arms around his torso and spoke quietly into his ear. The words were in the local language, but he caught the indicator of negative and the word for fear. She was telling him not to be afraid. A woman caught the girl’s arm and towed her gently away, while Incacha said something with an indulgent smile on his face. 

It was getting much darker now. Blair could see the tribe’s people as shadowy figures beneath the trees. He waited, still wondering what the hell they intended to do to him next. 

***

Jim had watched from a distance as Sandburg was prepared for the ritual, clearly terrified by what was happening to him. Jim wanted to break through the crowd and reassure him that he was safe, that no one here intended him harm. But he’d promised Incacha to let Sandburg go through the ritual unguided. So he waited, fists clenched so tightly that his nails dug into his palms, trying to block out the cries of fear. 

Incacha bound Sandburg in the position of supplication. Jim knew how uncomfortable that was, remembering his own aches with sympathy. As Jim watched, one of the children, a little girl, came to him. She spoke in the local language. 

_“Why does he fight? Does he have an evil spirit in him that doesn’t want to be cleansed?”_

_“No,”_ Jim answered. _“He’s afraid. The rituals of his tribe are different and he doesn’t know our words. He thinks we plan to hurt him.”_

_“Someone should tell him we’re not bad.”_

_“I agree,”_ Jim said. He should tell him. But he’d told Incacha he wouldn’t. Right now, it was taking all of his resolve to keep that promise. 

The girl broke from his side and dodged through the adult members of the tribe. She gave Sandburg an impulsive hug, whispering in his ear that he didn’t need to be scared. Jim smiled slightly as he saw Sandburg’s look of confusion. The bound man was still tense and worried, but the look of abject terror had vanished. 

The drums were beating out the earth music, connecting to Sandburg’s internal rhythms. Supposedly. Jim wasn’t sure how much of this stuff he believed and how much was a concoction of the locals when they were high on some really good drugs. Whichever it was, Sandburg was in for an unpleasant night. 

One of the women carried over a large, clay bowl, painted with animal figures around the rim. The bowl was filled with water. She set it down beside Sandburg and then blended back into the crowd. Incacha took a cloth and dipped it into the water, chanting the ritual words of blessing. He asked the spirits to impart their cleansing energies in this water, to wash the body clean so that the spirit could be pure. Then Incacha took Sandburg’s bound hands and began to wash them. 

***

Blair wasn’t sure what to make of the washing, but it was clearly a ritual. The drums and the chanting suggested that there was some huge, cultural significance to this. He hoped that meant that they weren’t about to kill him, but it was possible that this was all in preparation for a ritual slaughter. Incacha moved on to Blair’s chest, wiping methodically with his cloth, dipping it in the water, and starting over again. Then he moved round and cleaned Blair’s back, the water stinging slightly against the grazes that had formed when he’d been fighting them on the floor. Blair wondered if there was something in the water to make it sting like that. He hope he wasn’t about to have another hallucinogenic fit, particularly when he was strung up by his neck. 

Now his entire torso was damp, faint droplets running down his skin. Incacha came back round to Blair’s front again. He reached out a thumb to wipe away traces of tears that still clung to Blair’s cheeks. Then he dipped the cloth and reached out to clean Blair’s face. 

Never mind that Blair was kneeling in the dirt. Dirt that was fast becoming mud under the drips from Incacha’s cleaning. This was more about symbolic cleaning than actual cleaning. 

When Incacha finished, the drumming stopped, an abrupt cessation of sound. The members of the tribe began to wander away. Incacha placed a hand on Blair’s shoulder and gave a gentle smile, then he stood and walked away. Blair was left alone beneath the tree, watching shadowy forms head back to the clearing or to their own huts for the night. 

In the stillness, Blair became aware of a thousand separate aches. He was bruised where the men had held him, scraped from the rough ground. His skin was chafed by the biting ropes. His legs were already complaining at the kneeling position. Blair could shift a little to get some blood flow going, causing stabs of pins and needles through his lower legs. He bit back any sound of pain. He wanted to slouch or to lean back against something, but his posture was held rigorously upright by the rope around his neck. 

Time crept by and Blair waited, fearful of what might follow. No one came to him. Nothing happened. 

The only sounds were the buzzing of insects, the wind in the leaves and the snuffling of small creatures in the undergrowth. 

Minutes became hours and tiredness crept over him. He found himself nodding from time to time but, as he slumped forward in sleep, his neck would catch against the rope and he would jerk awake. He could kill himself by sleeping. 

He tried to keep himself awake by doing a mental catalogue of cleansing rituals. Symbolic washing of hands and face was common to many religions and preceded the worship of a deity. Some religions required the washing of the entire body, often in sites of spiritual significance. Some cultures included chants or mantras into the cleansing ritual. Blair thought of Incacha chanting over the bowl before the cleaning began. 

There had been no smudge stick or herb burning, which Blair associated with cleansing rituals, largely because of Naomi’s habit of burning sage. That was more of a Native American tradition though, whereas water cleansing rituals occurred worldwide in a huge range of different cultures. 

Blair wasn’t sure what the cleansing here might be about. Sometimes cleansing was in preparation for something, sometimes in atonement. If he’d unknowingly broken some taboo, this might be a cleansing to wash away his guilt. If that was the case, then they’d probably let him go once they thought he was clean. The little girl’s hug and Incacha’s smile would indicate that there was no malice in this. 

Or they might be preparing him for something. That thought carried overtones of fear because he didn’t know what the something might be. 

His thoughts looped in worried circles as the night wore on. Time seemed to drag forever but then the first hints of light showed through the trees. A new day was dawning.


	4. Day Three

Jim had barely slept. He’d spent the night reaching out with his senses towards Sandburg, hearing every shuffling movement as the man failed to get comfortable. As morning came, Jim felt exhausted but he knew it must be nothing to how Sandburg was feeling. Jim left his hut and went over to where Sandburg still knelt, taking care to keep out of sight. He stood behind Sandburg, among the trees so that even if Sandburg managed to turn, he wouldn’t be easily seen. 

Others were coming over, wanting to see the next stage of the ceremony. They waited around the tree, talking quietly and watching as Sandburg looked around with obvious nerves. Incacha walked over from the clearing, carrying a pot filled with red paste. A hush fell over the waiting crowd. 

Incacha knelt before Sandburg and dipped a finger into the paste. He chanted a quick blessing, calling on the spirits to approach and bless this man. Then Incacha lifted his finger and began to draw on Sandburg’s chest with the red paste. Again and again, he dipped his finger back into the pot as he drew an outline of an animal form on the pale skin. Jim moved round, keeping under the shadows of the trees, so he could see what was being drawn. Incacha created an animal head in red lines. It might have been a dog or something like that, but Jim wasn’t sure. Incacha didn’t fill in the image. That would come later, if Sandburg successfully connected with his animal spirit. 

When the drawing was complete, Incacha placed his clean hand in the centre of the image and chanted another plea to the spirits to guide this man. 

Then he reached for his knife. 

Jim saw Sandburg flinch away, his eyes wide and scared. There was a whisper of confusion that ran through the watching tribe. 

Incacha pressed the tip of his knife to the tip of one of his own fingers, causing a little puddle of blood to well up. With this bloody finger, Incacha reached out to draw a circle on Sandburg’s forehead. The Eye of God. The mark only Shamans could wear. Incacha was imparting his powers to Sandburg through the touch of his own blood. 

This was a shock for the tribe. In his time here, Jim had never heard of the Shaman powers being granted to an outsider. That said, Jim was the first outsider to have been granted the position of the tribe’s Sentinel. 

Sandburg was looking between Incacha and the surprised watchers. He must know something significant had just happened, but his expression was one of confusion. The trace of fear was still in there. 

This stage of the ceremony completed, everyone wandered back to their usual work. Jim waited a moment longer to watch Sandburg, who seemed no less worried for having been left alone again. 

Jim would have liked to wait here all day, to ensure that Sandburg remained safe. It wasn’t unheard of for people to injure themselves by fainting or falling asleep during the latter part of the cleansing. But Jim had his own duties to attend. He gathered a group of young warriors and headed up to the pass to replace those who stood on duty guarding against the guerrillas. 

***

Blair had hoped his ordeal would end when Incacha returned to him that morning. Unfortunately, that wasn’t the case. He’d been left alone again, aching, uncomfortable and utterly exhausted. He wanted to sleep. More than that, he wanted to drink. He was painfully thirsty, his throat dry and sore, particularly after all the yelling he’d done last night. He was a little hungry, but that was far less significant than his thirst. 

He also needed the bathroom. 

He was pretty sure now that they weren’t about to untie him for a bathroom break. Blair tried to manoeuvre himself. He had just enough length of rope to reach his crotch and could kneel up slightly and aim his cock away from him. A stream of yellow sprayed on the dirt nearby, forming a large puddle that was slowly spreading, trickling streams heading back towards Blair. 

A woman walked out from between the trees and kicked some dirt into the puddle of urine, the liquid turning to foul-smelling mud. She kicked a bit more dirt until there was a damp patch close to him but at least the urine hadn’t flowed back to soak his legs. He thanked her. She nodded and disappeared back into the trees. 

She’d appeared very suddenly when he’d started peeing. She must have been watching him this whole time. Blair wasn’t sure what to make of that. He supposed it was a good thing as it meant someone would likely step in to stop him strangling himself if he fell asleep. He hoped. 

He settled back onto his heels and waited for what might happened next. 

He really needed a drink. 

The day quickly grew warmer, the air damp and muggy. Blair’s skin was sticky with sweat and the lines of paint on his chest were itching like crazy. He could hear conversation and laughter from the direction of the main clearing, but no one approached him, at least no one he could see. 

He wanted to sleep. He wanted a drink. He was fantasising about feather beds, swimming pools and water coolers. He’d settle for being able to stand up and stretch. 

How long did they intend to keep him like this? 

His stomach growled at him. 

A large insect landed on his chest. He tried to shrug it away. 

He wondered if the university knew they were missing yet. Probably. But what would they do about it? Would they be talking to the local authorities about a search and rescue team? Or would they be phoning Naomi to say that Blair was presumed dead? 

Blair wanted to be home. 

He’d been through some terrifying experiences in his travels, but somehow this was worse. This long, drawn-out wait for some unknown purpose was driving him mad. He had too much time to think, to fret, to worry. 

Overhead, clouds built up in a grey mass, turning the forest nearly night dark. The air was heavy with moisture and heat. 

When the clouds burst, water fell in a warm torrent. Blair tilted his head, trying to catch the blessed moisture in his mouth to soothe his dry throat. Heavy drops pounded into his skin. The rain plastered his hair to his scalp and ran in rivers down his skin. He closed his eyes and leaned his head back, feeling the water as a soothing flow, washing away sweat and pain. 

The rain stopped as suddenly as it began. The air practically steamed with moisture. Blair was surprised to note that the animal shape painted on his chest appeared unaffected. He would have expected the flow of rain to blur the paint, but apparently whatever they used was extremely durable. 

He’d managed to drink a little of the falling rain. He could still do with a good drink, but it wasn’t as bad now as it had been. He could really do with food now. 

Maybe that was why they’d been so insistent on feeding him yesterday. Maybe they’d known the hunger he was about to endure and wanted him prepared for it. 

Blair could hear Adrian yelling, demanding that the primitives give him some food. Blair felt like yelling right along with him. Why were they doing this to him? 

At least he knew that the others were probably alive. He couldn’t see the cage from here so he couldn’t be sure, but he doubted Adrian would have stayed quiet this long if they’d been seriously mistreating him. Blair wondered how Adrian would have reacted to being in Blair’s place. 

The air took on a faintly golden glow as evening approached. Incacha returned to Blair, others in the village coming to watch again, standing a respectful distance away. Incacha knelt in front of Blair and gave another chant before drawing his bone knife. Blair wondered for a moment if he was going to get more blood smeared on him to replace what the rain had washed away. 

Instead, Incacha sliced through the ropes that held Blair’s knees together. He then cut the long end of rope attached to Blair’s wrists. Blair’s hands were still tied together, but the rope no longer attached to the tree roots. 

Incacha walked around Blair and cut his ankles free, then cut the rope noose. Blair’s first response was to shift to a sitting position, using his bound hands to massage some life back into his lower legs, which flared up again with pins and needles. 

Something soft wrapped around his eyes. Blair fought a momentary panic as Incacha quickly tied a blindfold into place. Blair reached up his bound hands to touch it, feeling a band of what might have been animal skin that blocked out all light. 

Blair wondered what would happen if he just yanked off the blindfold and tried to run. He had unpleasant visions of being shot in the back as he tried to flee. 

Incacha took hold of Blair’s arm. Someone approached him and took hold of him from the other side. Between them, they helped Blair to his feet. He wavered unsteadily for a moment, legs cramping from having been trapped for so long. He needed both pairs of hands to stay upright. Then Incacha’s hands dropped away. The other guy took hold of the rope attached to Blair’s wrists. With a gentle tug on the rope and a nudge on his arm, the person encouraged Blair to start walking. 

Blair made it about two steps before tripping on a tree root. The man, Blair was pretty sure it was a man, was ready to catch him and keep his upright. Blair’s side brushed against the man’s and Blair was surprised to notice fabric. It didn’t feel like animal skins or rough, local weave. 

Then the man nudged him into motion again and Blair had other things to worry about, like not falling flat on his face in the dirt.


	5. Night Three

Jim carried a bag of supplies over one shoulder as he led Sandburg away from the tribe. There was something deeply uncomfortable about leading a blindfolded, bound and naked man through the jungle. At least Jim hadn’t been blindfolded when Incacha had put him through this, but Incacha didn’t want Sandburg to see Jim until after the ceremony. 

Sandburg stumbled and stubbed his toes, no matter how careful Jim tried to be about guiding him. The forest was a nightmare of plants and tangled branches that could scratch at bare skin. The ground was uneven, made an obstacle course by rocks and roots. Jim walked slowly, hands on Sandburg’s shoulders, urging him along smoother paths. 

Sandburg was clearly still scared but he had an interesting reaction to it. He started talking. 

“I read an article about a Cherokee coming of age ritual,” he said. “Apparently, to be considered an adult, a boy was taken into the forest by his father, bound and blindfolded. The boy would have to sit alone and blindfolded for the night. If he removed the blindfold early, he wouldn’t be considered an adult. There are interesting parallels with many other tribal rituals of coming of age. Often there is a period of pain, discomfort or fear that must be endured.” 

He kept talking for a while. Jim wondered what sort of things this guy must read. Jim wondered if it was better to know that this was a ritual to be endured. When Jim had first come here, he’d barely spoken a word of the language and had thought that Incacha meant to kill him. Jim suspected it made little difference. Sandburg’s fear had been obvious and genuine. His words now were probably just a mask for that fear. 

Jim let him talk, amused and interested to hear it. He could imagine Sandburg talking about this experience afterwards with the same fascination in his tone. 

After a while, they reached a clearing beside a small stream. The ground was soft with moss and there was a fallen tree trunk, half-overgrown, on the edge of the clearing. Jim touched his hand to Sandburg’s mouth. Sandburg fell silent. 

Jim took Sandburg over to the tree trunk and urged him down. Sandburg moved slowly and carefully, but then he sat on the ground and he leaned back against the mossy trunk. He started to sit cross-legged but then shifted and brought his legs up in front of him, shielding his groin from view. He must still be feeling embarrassingly exposed. 

Jim set his bag down and removed supplies from it. There was a stash of dried branches, which would be easier to start a fire with than using the sodden wood around here. Jim set the fire carefully, and got out a little tin in which he stored tinder materials. He had some dried bark and bits of bird down that would catch light easily. He set some on the ground beside his fire and got out a standard issue lighter. He could use a fire bow, but he didn’t see the point of making life difficult for himself. He lit the tinder and pushed it under his construction of dry twigs, blowing gently until the fire caught. It was slow work to feed it up, adding larger twigs and branches until he had a good blaze going. 

Sandburg was tilted towards the fire, no doubt feeling its warmth against his bare skin. Jim took a tin pot and went down to the stream to fill it with water. He then set the pot right in the blaze to heat the water to a boil. 

“I’m hoping this means a meal is heading my way,” Sandburg said. “I know that ritual fasts are a common feature in many cultures, but I like three squares a day.” 

Jim did have some food in his bag, but not for now. Instead, he prepared the dream tea, the mixture of herbs carefully packaged up in folds of leaves. Incacha had given him this package specifically for Sandburg. The scent was subtly different from the one other tribe members used for their rituals, a slightly sharper, bitter tang to it. This was what Incacha had been preparing in his hut a couple of days ago, the thing he’d said was for the shaman. He’d meant Sandburg. 

Jim tipped the mixture into the now bubbling pot and waited, letting the water boil longer to ensure it was safe. 

When he was confident that the water was bug free, Jim used sticks to manoeuvre the pot out of the fire. He dipped a drinking bowl in and filled it with a generous helping of the dream tea. Then he crossed to where Sandburg still sat. 

Jim pressed the bowl to Sandburg’s lips. Sandburg swallowed the first sip but then reacted to the bitter taste with horror and recognition. He flinched away, knocking the bowl away with his bound hands. The tea spilled on the ground, a large splash landing on Sandburg’s bare leg. 

He gave a hiss of pain. 

Jim raced back to his bag and grabbed his canteen, pouring the cold water over the area that had been splashed. It was a waste of good drinking water, but he needed to be sure that Sandburg wasn’t scalded. 

When the water was emptied, he reached out to touch Sandburg’s leg. Sandburg involuntarily flinched away, but Jim thought it was from having a stranger touch him rather than from pain. He didn’t notice any forming blisters or other signs that the spilled tea had cause injury. 

Sandburg started rambling again, “Look, I know this is probably an important part of the ritual but I’m not sure about this. I’m not too keen on hallucinogens and I really don’t want to be out of my mind when I’m tied up and naked in a jungle somewhere. So maybe if we could pretend I did the whole hallucination thing, I would appreciate-“ 

Jim put a hand on Sandburg’s shoulder and the man fell quiet. Jim hoped that the gesture would give the message that Sandburg wasn’t alone, that he was safe. At the very least, it was good that he stopped rambling. 

Jim picked up the drinking bowl, wiped it clean of dirt, and refilled it with tea. He went back to Sandburg, this time placing the full bowl into Sandburg’s hands. Sandburg didn’t instantly throw the tea away this time. Jim wasn’t sure what to do if he did. He wanted to take the blindfold off and tell Sandburg he was safe. Instead, he settled for placing his hand back on Sandburg’s shoulder. 

“If I try to run, I suppose you’ll stop me,” Sandburg said. “And it’s not like there’s anywhere I can go. I suppose I could keep throwing this stuff away. You’re bound to run out eventually, but will you just tie me up again until you make more? I just... I want this to be over.” 

Sandburg sighed. Then he lifted the bowl to his lips. He swallowed a mouthful, before lowering the bowl again, making a face at the taste. Jim touched Sandburg’s hands, gently lifting up. Sandburg raised the bowl again, drinking down the tea. 

Jim waited until the bowl was drained and then took it from him, setting it aside on the damp earth. Then he gently eased Sandburg down until he was lying on his side on the moss. Sandburg kept his legs tucked up, as though in a protective measure. Jim filled with pot with water and set it to boil again, before sitting down on the ground beside the fire to wait and to watch. 

***

Blair stood in a jungle. Everything was tinged blue, as though he was looking at things underwater. He was dressed again, which he realised was odd. He also appeared to be thinking clearly, which was even more so since he’d just downed a load of mind-whammy on an empty stomach. The fact that he was able to see without ever taking his blindfold off suggested that this was all some massive trip. 

He started walking through the jungle, not sure what he was looking for. 

The first creature he saw was the wolf, standing between the trees and looking at him. What the hell was a wolf doing in the jungle? It didn’t belong here. Then again, neither did Blair. 

As the wolf turned and began to run through the trees, Blair followed. Maybe if the wolf was getting out of the jungle, he could follow it and get back to somewhere they both belonged. He ran. The wolf stayed ahead of him, but Blair kept up, somehow, without ever seeming to get out of breath. Trees blurred past on either side as Blair chased the wolf. 

Then he found himself in another clearing, the wolf nowhere in sight. Blair stared around, wondering how he could have lost the creature, wondering how the hell he was supposed to find his way out here. 

Then the wolf leapt out at him, knocking him to the earth. Blair was pinned to the dirt by the heavy creature on top of him, smelling of damp fur and warm breath. The wolf flowed into him, fur melting through Blair’s skin. They melded together into one creature. Blair was the wolf. The wolf was Blair. 

He looked out at the blue jungle through new eyes, seeing with sharpness, smelling with clarity he’d never have imagined. He stood on the earth on four paws, fur rippling the breeze. He felt strong, powerful, a hunter in this world. He was a wolf and a wolf was not cowed. All of the fear and powerlessness of the past few days melted away. 

Something was moving between the trees, another creature under the blue branches. A jungle cat, a jaguar, was looking at the wolf-Blair. The human in him knew that he should be afraid but the wolf had had enough of fear. It wasn’t going to be made to tremble and beg, not anymore. The wolf wanted to reclaim its dignity, its pride. The wolf wanted to prove it was not weak. 

The wolf-Blair stalked towards the Jaguar, giving a low growl, glaring at the cat’s yellow eyes. 

The cat backed down. The wolf in Blair crowed in triumph. It wanted revenge for the feeling of helplessness. It leapt at the cat. 

Wolf and jaguar met in a mass of fur, the wolf pinning the jaguar. It was part combat, part sex, the wolf claiming the cat, pounding an erection into the jaguar’s opening. It was an act of claiming, of domination, not of passion. 

The human in Blair pulled away, fighting down the wolf. 

He stood, the wolf’s fur melting away until he was a man again. 

He saw the jaguar whimpering on the earth. Its fur was fading too, leaving skin and cloth. A man lay on the ground, a warrior, looking up at Blair with eyes the most perfect blue. Eyes that were filled with fear. 

***

It was like waking from a dream. The images were still clear in his mind, clearer than any dream he’d ever known. He could still see those blue eyes. 

He reached up to remove the blindfold, finding as he did so that his hands were untied. It was still dark, but the clearing was lit by the low flames of a small fire. Curled up on the earth beside it, rousing from dreams of his own, was a large man. Even in the darkness, Blair knew it was the man who’d been in his dream, the man who had been the jaguar. As he looked towards Blair, those blue eyes shone like beacons in the darkness. 

“Did that just happen?” Blair asked. 

“I think so,” the other man answered. 

Maybe it was the exhaustion or the starvation, maybe it was the drugs, but it took Blair considerably longer than it should have done to realise something very obvious. 

“You just spoke English.” 

"Yeah," the guy said. Blair looked at him. He definitely wasn’t local, and seemed to be dressed in military garb that was certainly the worse for wear. Blair wanted to ask who the hell this guy was and why he hadn’t spoken to Blair before, but there was another question that needed to be asked first. 

“Did you,” Blair faltered for the right word, “experience that?” 

The man nodded. Blair had turned into a wolf and raped a jaguar who’d turned into a man. Blair knew that they hadn’t physically touched, but he wasn’t sure that made it better. He’d raped a guy’s spirit. 

Blair bent over and heaved, vomiting up a foul bile that stung at his throat. There was nothing else in his stomach to throw up. 

The other man pulled a pot from the fire and filled the drinking bowl. There was no herb smell this time, just clean water. The man offered it to Blair. 

“Here,” he said. 

Blair reached out. Their fingers touched and the other guy flinched slightly, sending a splash of water onto the jungle floor. Blair took the bowl and sipped at it, hot water washing away the taste of vomit, but not the sick taste of guilt. 

“I’m sorry,” Blair said. “I wouldn’t... I mean... I know I did, but I wouldn’t...” 

He couldn't find the words. If he said it out loud, it meant acknowledging that the dream wasn’t a dream. It meant acknowledging that he was a monster. He faded off. 

After a moment he asked, “Have you got any clothes?” 

“Oh. Right. Of course.” The other guy was very definitely not looking at Blair. He went to a bag, a modern back pack, and pulled out a bundle of cloth, tossing it over still without really looking. Blair looked at the bundle. His clothes, including the shoes, but minus the t-shirt. Blair quickly got dressed, relieved to have something to cover up with, even if his chest was still exposed. The red wolf’s head, for Blair was sure now that was what it was, was still clear on his skin. 

The guy had rummaged some more in his back and handed over some fruit, nuts and a round bun of some sort of bread. Blair had been ravenously hungry earlier. Now, he wasn’t sure he could face it. He’d raped a man. OK, he’d raped a jaguar, but the jaguar had been a person. He wasn’t sure his stomach could handle having anything in it or he might just throw up again. 

“Eat,” the other guy said, “then get some sleep. We’ll head back to the village when it’s light.” 

“OK,” Blair answered. He ate mechanically, his stomach apparently willing to accept the food. 

When he was done, he saw the other guy curled up on the ground, facing away from him, but eyes still open and staring into the darkness. 

“I didn’t catch your name,” Blair said. 

“Jim Ellison.” 

“Goodnight, Jim.” 

“Goodnight, Sandburg.”


	6. Day Four

Jim didn’t really sleep. Again. This time he was kept away by the knowledge that he was lying about two metres away from a man whose spirit had forced itself on Jim’s. Jim guessed he’d got a little too close to the pot and inhaled some of the fumes, because he’d slipped into visions almost as soon as Sandburg had. In the jungle, Jim had become the jaguar and then the wolf had been there. 

Jim knew that nothing had happened. They hadn’t even been close enough to touch. But he could still feel the wolf thrusting inside the jaguar. Jim could still feel that sense of helplessness. 

Sandburg seemed genuinely horrified that it had happened but he’d still done it. Some part of him anyway. Some aspect of Sandburg’s psyche had decided to fight back by raping Jim. So Jim lay awake, listening to Sandburg sleep, because he was too afraid to give Sandburg a chance to finish the job. 

When the sun finally rose, Jim kicked dirt over the remains of the fire and packed his things in the bag as noisily as possible. He didn’t want to have to shake Sandburg awake. 

He told himself that he was being ridiculous. Sandburg was hardly going to overpower him and have his way with him. But the fears were still there, an instinctive reaction just below the surface. At least he wouldn’t have to put up with it for long. He would take the guy back for the last part of the ceremony and then Jim could head up to the pass and stay there until someone came hunting for the lost geeks. Assuming Sandburg woke up to go back to the village. 

He compromised, giving Sandburg a prod in the leg with his boot. Sandburg woke, blinking up at Jim groggily. Jim could practically see the memories return to him. Sandburg’s face went from an expression of confusion to one of guilt. He flustered about getting up. 

“Oh. Are we going back? Do you want me to carry anything? As long as I’m not blindfolded this time, that is. I won’t be, will I? Because I think I stubbed my toe on every tree in the jungle last night.” 

“Do you ever stop talking?” Jim asked. 

The flow of words stumbled to an embarrassed stop. 

"Sorry. I tend to ramble when I'm nervous. Or when I'm excited about a new research topic or something I've read. Or... Well, you get the point.” 

Jim found himself chuckling despite himself. 

"Yeah, I get the point, chief." 

Jim wasn't sure where that name had come from, but Sandburg just let it go, so Jim did to. He pulled on his backpack and started walking, Sandburg trailing behind. The silence didn’t last long. 

“So how did you end up here?” Sandburg asked. 

Jim suspected he’d be treated to another lecture on tribal rituals if he didn’t fill up the silence, so he told his story. He kept it simple and to the facts, explaining about how his team had been sent here to make contact with the locals and hold the Chopec pass from the guerrillas. 

“Your team?” Sandburg asked. “Does this mean there are other Americans here?” 

“No. They died.” 

“Oh. I’m sorry, man.” 

"Yeah. Me too." 

They walked a little further. Progress was much quicker today than it had been last night. For a moment, Jim wondered if they’d make it the rest of the way back to the village in silence, but of course Sandburg wasn’t going to keep his mouth shut for that long. 

“Do you have any way of communicating with someone in America?” he asked. 

“No. And frankly I’d expected to be relieved before now. The replacement team should have been here a few months ago.” 

“That doesn’t bode well for getting the rest of us back home.” 

Sandburg was worried. He tried to keep it out of his voice, but Jim heard it. A little tremor of concern. He wanted to make that tremor go away, to tell this man he was safe and protected. Jim didn’t know where that reaction came from. He ought to hate this guy for what had happened in the vision. Instead, he felt the urge to comfort him. 

“The US government doesn’t like to lose civilians to guerrilla action,” Jim said. “It looks bad in the papers. Someone will be trying to figure out what happened.” 

“Great.” 

Jim could see the huts between the trees, shapes of branches and mud that blended into the background but which stood out clearly to Sentinel eyes. Finally. He could get rid of Sandburg and get back to the warriors, where he belonged. 

There were a lot of people around the main clearing. The whole tribe had wanted to see the stranger accept his spirit. Normally, a lot of the tribe disappeared into the jungle during the day, hunting or foraging, but today they waited for Jim to bring Sandburg back. 

The American group were still in the cage, on their feet and waiting by the bars as Sandburg walked into the clearing. The oldest of the group called out. 

“Sandburg, you alright?” 

“I’m fine,” Sandburg called back. 

Incacha approached. He nodded to Jim and then stood in front of Sandburg. He placed a hand on each of Sandburg’s shoulders and looked into Sandburg’s eyes. He stared for a moment and then nodded, smiling. He gave a sideways glance at Jim, his expression changing slightly to one of puzzlement, but whatever he saw, he didn’t speak about yet. Instead, he spoke to the tribe. 

_“This one went into the spirit world without a guide. He guided himself. He found his spirit animal and returned to his body. Blairsanbur, I shall train you in the ways of the shaman.”_

Jim gave a rough translation to Sandburg, who looked surprised and excited at this last part, but Incacha hadn’t finished talking. 

_“I will teach you to be a guide to Enquiri.”_

_“What?!”_ Jim demanded. He hadn’t agreed to this. Incacha placed a hand on Jim’s arm, another on Blair’s. 

_“Your spirits have begun to connect,”_ Incacha said. _“This was meant to be.”_

_“No. I don’t need a guide. I especially don’t need him.”_

Jim walked away, leaving the bewildered Sandburg in his wake. Incacha had planned this from the beginning. This was why he’d sent Jim into the jungle with Sandburg. Had he known what would happen in the vision? 

Jim didn’t want to believe that Incacha would set him up for that, but he still wondered. The thought was enough to make him furious. He hoped he was wrong. 

Either way, he needed to clear his head. He retrieved his crossbow from his hut and set off towards the pass. The duty of the Sentinel was to guard the tribe. His place was out there. Alone. Without Sandburg. 

***

Blair wasn’t sure what Incacha had said, but it had been enough to send Jim off in a rage. It might have been something to do with what had happened in the spirit world but he never got the chance to ask. There had been much he couldn’t follow, but Blair picked up one word of it: Sentinel. It was a word that hadn’t been far from Blair’s thoughts since he’d come here, to the heart of Burton’s stories of tribal protectors. 

Incacha looked disappointed as Jim left, but he kept going, sitting Blair down on a tree stump and fetching again the bowl of red paste with which to paint Blair’s skin. He filled in the wolf’s head image on Blair’s chest, speaking words that Blair didn’t understand. This was something to do with spirits, strength and protection. 

When he’d finished, Incacha stood and gestured for Blair to do the same. Then he hugged Blair. Suddenly, Blair was surrounded by people hugging him, touching him, patting him, all with grins on their faces. They spoke to him with words he didn’t understand. One girl, a woman about Blair’s own age, smiled flirtatiously and played with his hair. She braded a little clump, weaving a feather into the plaite. 

“What’s going on, Sandburg?”

Professor Carlson was slowly approaching through the crowds, a nervous smile plastered to his face. Someone had opened the door of the cage for them. 

“I think I’ve become part of the tribe,” Blair said. 

Another girl was playing with his hair now, smiling up at him from a lowered faced. Someone grabbed his ass and Blair gave a yelp of surprise. When he turned to look, he got the suspicion that the hand hadn’t belonged to either of the girls, but to an old man who was chuckling at Blair’s obvious discomfort. 

"Is the next step an orgy or something?" asked Ashley. Several young women were busy feeling him up through his clothes. He seemed rather excited at the possibility. Blair wasn’t, mainly because he doubted this tribe would have much understanding of contraception or protection from STDs. He also wasn’t sure he was up for anything sexual because he couldn’t get the image of the vision, and the associated sick feeling of guilt, out of his mind. 

“I have no idea what happens next,” Blair said. 

What happened next turned out to be food, with all of the Americans provided breakfast. More young women kept trying to play with Blair’s hair and he soon ended up with more feathers, a few flowers and a carved wooden bead plaited into it. 

“If they’ve made you part of their society,” Professor Carlson suggested, “it’s possible they expect you to pick a bride. These ornaments could be their way of expressing their interest.” 

“It’s possible,” Blair agreed, wondering how best to explain he wasn’t interested. He’d probably best wait for Jim to come back and translate. Many men in the tribe had things in their hair, but not nearly as many as Blair. 

After a little while, a slightly chubby older woman came and shoed the girls away from him. Blair was grateful, up until the moment that the woman smiled at him and added a bead of animal bone to his growing collection. 

“I think I may be in trouble here,” Blair said, while Ashley laughed his head off. 

Blair was rescued by a group of young men, possibly in an effort to separate him from the women. These men took Blair into the jungle, showing him to where they had traps and snares set in the undergrowth. In some, small animals were trapped, killed with an efficient snap of the neck. Then the men showed Blair how to reset the snares. Most were simple enough, with loops of chord that would pull tight as an animal struggled to escape. Others were complex contraptions of bent twigs, tied with chord and weighted with stones. 

Blair had been on anthropological studies with primitive peoples, so he’d seen before these methods of food capture. The men seemed pleased with how quickly Blair grasped the lessons. He wondered if Jim had been shown these techniques when he’d come to the jungle. 

Back in the village, they skinned and gutted their catches. It was a process that made Blair understand the appeal of vegetarianism. Malcolm saw what Blair was doing and hurried off to be sick in the bushes. 

They’d just finished the preparations and were washing up in the river when a man came running into the village. He had a crossbow on his back and a splattering of blood up one arm. He spoke rapidly to the nearest people, who pointed towards Blair. The moment the man spotted him, he bore down on Blair. 

He said something quickly, with unmistakable urgency in his tone. Then he grabbed Blair’s wrist and started towing him through the trees. Blair had to run just to stop himself being pulled over, but he had no idea what was going on. The man had been speaking too quickly for Blair understand any of it. He just ran, panting hard as he fought to keep up. They headed up a slope from the village, climbing into a pass between two peaks. Then they stumbled onto what was clearly a pass. 

Two men lay dead in the middle of it. Dressed in camouflage gear, their modern weapons stripped and stacked to one side, they’d clearly been guerrillas. Now they were corpses. 

Standing beside them, was Jim. For a moment, Blair thought Jim was studying the bodies, inspecting them for something. But Jim didn’t move. He just stared at them, a blank look on his face. A handful of Chopec warriors stood near him, looking at him with concern. The man who’d fetched Blair gave a gentle shove towards Jim. 

Blair, still more than a little confused, walked up to Jim. He spoke quietly, as one would to a sleep walker. 

“Jim? Jim, is everything alright? What are you looking at?” 

He placed a hand on Jim's arm. Jim blinked, coming out of a daze. He looked at Blair, instantly puzzled. 

“Where the hell did you come from?” 

"They fetched me. You were just staring into space.” 

Jim turned to the locals, who were hovering nearby with concerned expressions. He snapped something at them and got a reply. His annoyance vanished. Jim dragged a hand over his face. He looked exhausted. 

“Sometimes I can get too focused on one thing,” he said, not quite meeting Blair’s gaze, “and I don’t notice everything else. It’s nothing. I’m fine now. You can go back.” 

Blair’s thoughts went instantly to Burton’s book and his description of zoning out. It sounded the same. Blair just didn’t know how to ask someone if they had heightened senses in a way that wouldn’t sound nuts if he was wrong. 

Jim said something to the man who’d fetched Blair. Blair caught his name and the word for village. Jim was telling the guy to take Blair back. 

“Are you sure you don’t need me here?” Blair asked. “What if you zone out again?” 

“I’ll be fine. Besides, it’s not safe here.” He gestured at the bodies on the ground, that Blair had almost forgotten about. Blair glanced at them now and fought down an urge to vomit. Dead bodies, spewing blood onto the earth. Blair hadn’t noticed the smell of it when he’d been zoned out in his own way on Jim. Now it hit him. Suddenly Blair was very glad to get out of there. He let himself be taken back towards the village, while Jim stalked off into the trees.


	7. Night Four

Blair didn’t see Jim again for the rest of the day. He and the others from the university shared the evening meal with the tribe. This day’s was far less lavish than the feast before his ordeal had begun. Still, they made sure that their guests had enough to eat and Blair was given a large portion of the food he’d helped with preparing. 

When the meal was over, there was a little conversation but soon the members of the tribe were drifting away, heading for their huts as night fell. Incacha approached Blair with a smile and guided him through the trees to a lopsided hut. For a moment, Blair wondered if he was being given a spare hut that wasn’t good enough for normal use. Then he saw the sleeping bag and bits of gear that had once been issued by the US army. This was Jim’s hut. 

“Are you sure about this?” Blair asked. The last time he’d spoken to Jim, it had been clear that Jim didn’t want to see him. Incacha gestured at the inside of the hut and walked away. 

Blair supposed he could always leave if Jim didn’t want him here. He didn’t want to use the other man’s sleeping bag. Fortunately, he was exhausted enough to sleep just about anywhere. He lay down on the floor of the hut, closed his eyes and slept. 

*** 

Blair dreamt of the blue jungle. He ran through the trees, sometimes wolf, sometimes human. He moved with ease, not out of breath or sore however hard he ran. So he ran, on and on. 

He was hunting for something. 

He wasn’t sure what. He just knew it was missing. There was a gaping void somewhere in his spirit that needed filling. 

He ran on, hoping to find it but finding only silent trees. 

***

Jim walked back to the village, hoping for his hut and a good night’s sleep. It was clear that he was more of a hindrance than a help to the warriors in his current state. He’d zoned out twice more, but thankfully the other warriors had managed to bring him out of it that time and they hadn’t seen any more guerrillas in the pass. 

He wasn’t sure why it had taken Sandburg to wake him up. He’d been so deeply in a zone that none of them had been able to bring him round and they’d been worried that there might be more enemies coming. Someone had suggested that the new Shaman might be able to do something. Jim just didn’t want to think about why. He didn’t like the idea of having to rely on that guy. 

Hopefully his problems were rooted in lack of sleep. He’d wake up tomorrow and his senses would be back to what passed for normal. Then he could get back up to the pass and continue his plan to avoid Sandburg. 

He reached his hut and knew instantly that something was wrong. The smell wasn’t as it should be. Another human being was inside. Jim pushed aside the skin curtain over the door and saw Sandburg curled up in the dirt. 

Emotions raged in sudden conflict. Shock and anger at the intrusion, that someone, anyone, would be in his private place. A strange sickness that it was this man, who’d stripped him of his dignity in spirit world. An irrational fear that the humiliation in the spirit world had just been the start and that Sandburg would continue to haunt him. But mingled in with those feelings was another one, that seemed like a betrayal to his manhood. Sandburg looked beautiful in his sleep, his features relaxed, hair strands twisting down over his face. 

Jim turned away with a shudder, wondering what the hell was wrong with him. How could he look at any man, but most particularly this man, in that way? Sandburg had violated him in the most intimate of ways and now he was violating the privacy of his home. This wasn’t the time to start checking him out. 

Jim left the hut, heading for the centre of the village and Incacha’s home. He walked straight into Incacha’s hut without waiting for invitation, despite knowing how the lack of respect towards the shaman would be perceived. He wasn’t in the mood to be nice tonight. Incacha was asleep, but woken instantly by Jim’s angry words. 

_“Why is Sandburg in my hut?”_ Jim asked. 

Incacha blinked up at him, confused and surprised. Possibly he was just trying to separate dreams from waking world. When he answered, his words made no sense to Jim. 

_“Your spirits have started to bond,”_ Incacha said. 

_“I don’t want him near me!”_

Incacha stood slowly and then added some wood to the embers of his fire to give them more light. Incacha didn’t have Sentinel senses to help him see. Once there were a few flames brightening the hut, Incacha stood in front of Jim and looked him in the eye. His puzzled expression remained. 

_“Sit down, Enquiri.”_

Jim sat. Incacha sat in front of him, studying him carefully. Jim waited, impatient for an answer, while Incacha inspected Jim with his eyes. 

_“Your spirit is out of balance,”_ Incacha said. 

_“What does that mean?”_

_“You began to bond with Blairsanbur in the spirit world but something has gone wrong. The connection is not clean and your spirit is injured.”_

Jim knew what had gone wrong. He knew that his spirit had taken a painful blow, but he wasn’t ready to tell Incacha or anyone about it. He just wanted Sandburg to be elsewhere so he could forget about it. He summed this up for Incacha, who shook his head. 

_“You cannot forget. You must heal. You and Blairsanbur must return to the spirit world to complete the bond and to cure the hurt.”_

_“I can’t.”_

_“Enquiri, you must. Whatever has gone wrong must be put right.”_

_“And if it can’t?”_

_“Your spirit will remain out of balance, damaging your emotions and bringing problems with your senses.”_

Jim could cope with his emotions being a mess, but he needed his Sentinel abilities. They were what let him protect the tribe. 

_“I don’t know how to put it right,”_ Jim said. 

_“You must return to the spirit world with him and finish what you started.”_

_“Now?”_

_“In the morning, when you have both slept.”_

Jim knew that he was supposed to take that as an instruction to leave. He was expected to go back to his hut, where Sandburg slept, and spend the night there. He felt a chill sweat over his palms. 

_“Can I stay here tonight?”_ Jim asked.


	8. Day Five

Blair woke with the dawn, finding himself still alone in the hut. It didn’t look like anyone had touched the sleeping bag. Blair got to his feet, stiff and sore from his night on the floor, trying to stretch cricks out of his spine. He was feeling a lot better for a night’s sleep but he could still do with about a week in a real bed before he’d feel fully himself again. Still, after a night spent tied to a tree, it was amazing how comfortable the ground could be. 

When he emerged from the hut, the members of the tribe were stirring, preparing breakfast or starting on a day’s work. As soon as Blair came outside, Incacha was there, gesturing for Blair to follow him. Inside Incacha’s hut, Jim was sitting beside the small fire. He looked up, anxious and apprehensive, at Blair’s arrival. At Incacha’s insistence, Blair sat down beside Jim. 

He fought for something to say, some words that could help close the gap between them. But no words could take away the pain of what had happened or make up for Blair’s actions. Blair settled for wishing him a subdued good morning and he got a grunt in response. Neither were meeting the other’s eye. Incacha looked between them both, clearly unhappy about the visible strain between them. 

Incacha set to work on the fire, putting herbs into a pot of water. From the smell, Blair already knew what was coming. 

Incacha spoke, with Jim translating as he went along. 

“He says that something went wrong between us when we went into the spirit world,” Jim said, “and that we have to drink the vision tea to try and put it right.” 

“How can we put it right?” Blair asked. He knew what had gone wrong. They both did. But it wasn’t like Blair could undo what he’d done while under the wolf’s influence. 

“I don’t know,” Jim answered. 

Incacha dipped two drinking bowls into the pot and handed one to each of them. Blair looked at the liquid within. He wasn’t sure he wanted to do this. He wasn’t sure he could do this. The last time he’d drunk this stuff, he’d raped a man. What might happen if he drank it again? 

Incacha spoke, insistently. Blair didn’t need to understand the language to know that it was an instruction to drink. Reluctantly, both men lifted the bowls to their lips. 

***

Jim stood in the blue jungle, familiar now after several vision dreams. Usually, he was alone or with the jaguar, sometimes with a copy of himself. This time, another man stood in the clearing beneath the trees. Sandburg stood, frightened, clenching his hands tightly in front of him as though he were afraid what they might do if he let go. 

“What do we do now?” Sandburg asked. 

“We get our spirits back in balance, apparently.” Jim snapped the words, still angry about what had happened before, but also annoyed that Sandburg seemed to expect him to know what to do. They were both flying blind here. 

“In balance?” Sandburg said. 

“That’s what Incacha said. We started to form a connection but something went wrong and now we’re out of balance.” 

“A connection? Well, that’s a nice euphemism.” 

“Yeah.” 

They stood there, awkwardly avoiding looking at each other. In a strange way, Jim felt perfectly normal. Normally, in the spirit world there was some drive, some instinct that influenced his actions. Now, there was just himself and Sandburg and the awkward conversation they’d been avoiding in the real world. 

“Maybe it’s ‘cause I forced you,” Sandburg said. 

“You think?” Jim muttered. 

“I mean... you said there was a connection... Maybe if you were to... you know... it would make things even. Restore the balance.” 

Was Sandburg asking Jim to fuck him? 

“Sex screwed things up and your answer is more sex?” Jim asked. 

“I don’t have an answer! I don’t know how to make this right.” 

Sandburg’s voice was choked, near tears. The sound forced Jim to focus on the guy, to really look at him. He was now hugging his arms around himself. He looked young, vulnerable, afraid. Up to now, some part of Jim had been afraid of this guy, beaten down by what had happened in the previous vision. That part of him had seen Sandburg as a monster, making Jim feel weak and vulnerable. Now Jim looked closer and saw the vulnerability echoed. 

Here, in this world of spirits, Jim could almost see the emotions written across Sandburg’s soul. He was hurting and afraid, but desperate to make right something which could never be right. So he was offering himself, afraid and unwilling, because at least then there would be fairness. Jim remembered the start of the ritual, how Sandburg had screamed and pleaded and tried to get them to stop. He’d been afraid of the very thing which he had then dealt. 

He was no less afraid now than he’d been then. But he’d offer his fear to Jim as a token of atonement. 

A part of Jim wanted to take it, to snatch the offered gift and make Sandburg pay in kind what he’d done. He took a step forwards, closing the distance. Sandburg flinched away slightly, but didn’t move his feet. He stayed, waiting, for whatever Jim might do to him. Jim could pin this man down, make him hurt, make him cry, make him feel afraid. 

But that wouldn’t make things right. 

Jim understood now. A part of him wanted revenge for the fear and sense of helplessness. He wanted to strike out, to make another feel as he’d felt. That was exactly what Sandburg must have felt, when he’d been overwhelmed by his animal spirit for the first time. Sandburg had acted on those animal instincts but, however much he wanted to, Jim couldn’t let himself do the same. 

Jim stood in front of Sandburg, aware of the size difference between them. He knew he was taller than Sandburg, but it seemed more accentuated. Jim towered over him. Perhaps here, their sizes reflected their emotional state and Sandburg was feeling very small. 

“Do you want this?” Jim asked. 

“I want to make things right,” Sandburg answered, “and I don’t know how else to do it.” 

“I don’t think it would work. We’re out of balance because you took advantage of me. If I do the same, it’ll just throw things out in the other direction.” 

“We need balance?” 

“Apparently. And we’ll probably be stuck in this vision thing until we get it.” 

“Well I for one don’t want to be stuck in a weird, blue hallucno-jungle forever.” 

Jim laughed despite himself, “Hallucno-jungle?” 

Sandburg started talking. He rambled about different options. Maybe this was a cleansing thing and he needed to cleanse his soul of the crime. Maybe it was about punishment or addressing the wrong that was done. He started talking about the different rituals that various cultures had for purging sin from a wrongdoer. 

“Slow down, chief,” Jim said. “We’ll be here all century if you try and do all that.” 

“I’m just considering options.” 

"OK, option one: I rape you. Not going to happen. Option two: we do some weird cleansing ritual which frankly sounds a bit hokey.” 

“We’re having a shared hallucination because my spirit animal raped yours,” said Sandburg. “Maybe it’s time to leave scepticism behind.” 

“If you say so. So what’s option three?” 

“Hey, man, I’ve come up with the first two options. It’s your turn.” 

“I guess I should play my part,” said Jim, and thought, failing to think of a third option. 

“Maybe that’s it!” Sandburg said suddenly. 

“What’s it?” 

“Playing our parts. It’s not about who’s on top, metaphorically speaking. It’s about being balanced, equal, both playing our parts.” 

He had a point. This had got screwed up because Sandburg had forced himself into a position of dominance. The key word could be balance. 

“So how do we do this?” Jim asked. “Do we just decide that we’re going to be equals and just expect everything to be back to normal?” 

“I don’t know. Maybe. Let’s agree to start again as equals, wipe clean the slate.” Blair offered his hand, “Hi, I’m Blair Sandburg.” 

Jim found himself smiling slightly, “I’m Jim Ellison, nice to meet you.” 

Jim reached out to shake Sandburg’s hand. 

***

Blair opened his eyes. He was slumped against the wall of Incacha's hut. Jim had also fallen sideways in his sleep, ending up with his head in Blair’s lap. He sat up sharply, but it was embarrassment written all over his face rather than fear. Blair almost started laughing at the expression, more through relief that at least Jim wasn’t flinching away from him because of terror anymore. 

"It can’t have been that simple,” Jim said. 

“Did it work?” Blair asked. 

"Do you know how a balanced spirit is supposed to feel?” 

Incacha crouched down in front of the pair of them, staring into first Jim’s eyes, then Blair’s. He nodded sharply and said something. Blair caught the word for spirit but not much else. Jim replied and got an answer. Incacha smiled and left them there. 

“Well?” Blair asked. 

“Apparently it worked,” said Jim. “My spirit is now back in balance and we’re... um... connected.” 

“What was the um?” 

“Um...” 

“Come on, Jim, what did he say?” 

“The word he used translates as connected but it’s usually used to refer to... um...” Jim gave a nervous laugh, “married couples.” 

Blair blinked. 

“We’re married?” he asked. 

“Apparently.” 

“Wow. Naomi’s going to be mad that she missed my wedding.” 

“Who’s Naomi? Your girlfriend.” 

Blair laughed, “No, my mum. There’s no girlfriend.” 

“Oh. Good.” 

“Good?” 

Jim had the decency to look embarrassed again, “I just mean it would be difficult to explain to a girlfriend.” 

“I guess,” Blair said. “And I guess this explains why Incacha put me in your hut last night.” 

“It would be difficult to explain things to everyone. Maybe we should just stick with it for now.” 

“Sure. But if we divorce, I’m getting your hut. You can keep the sleeping bag.” 

“I built that hut with my bare hands.” 

“You should have made me sign a pre-nup.” 

Jim started laughing, which was exactly the effect Blair had intended. Jim seemed completely different from the day before. He was relaxed and smiling. It seemed ridiculous that their simple conversation in the spirit world could cause such a miraculous change, but Blair was glad of it.


	9. Night Five

Blair sat on the floor of Jim’s hut, while Jim picked feathers, beads and flowers out of his hair. Blair had correctly guessed that these symbols were from the various women of the tribe declaring their interest. The act of removing them was part of Blair declaring he was accepting someone else’s offer. It seemed easiest to just go along with the idea and let the various members of the tribe assume that they were now a couple. It would certainly make it easier to prevent there being accidental pregnancies out of this trip. 

Jim dropped the last of the tokens into a bowl and set it outside the door to the hut. During the night, people would reclaim most of the items. 

“Are you going to put something of yours in?” Blair asked. His tone was laughing, almost flirtatious. “You don’t want someone else to usurp your claim.” 

Jim wasn’t sure whether Blair was genuinely expressing an interest or just playing along for a laugh. Jim decided to stick to the safe option and assume this was a joke. If he took Blair seriously and it turned out Blair hadn’t been, things could get messy. 

“Well, there aren’t any diamond ring shops around here, so we can’t do it properly,” Jim said. 

Jim was surprised how relaxed he felt around Blair now. After everything that had happened between them, it was astonishing how quickly the fear and tension had vanished. Their conversation in the spirit world seemed to have gone right down to Jim’s subconscious with the message that everything was now fine between them. The events of that first shared vision were fading like a bad dream in the daylight. In a way, that was what it was. After all, Blair had never physically touched him, so maybe it made sense that the memory of it would fade. 

He knew that people sometimes had to go through years of therapy to deal with issues like this, so he wasn’t going to complain about getting a short cut, however weird it might be. He just hoped it wasn’t that he was still high from the tea and all this would wear off. 

“What do we do about sleeping arrangements?” Blair asked. 

Jim’s bed, such as it was, was a padded mat of leaves raised off the ground by a construction of branches, topped by his sleeping bag. It was only built for one person. He hadn’t ever imagined having to share. 

“I’ll take the bed and you can have the sleeping bag,” Jim suggested. He wasn’t sure which of them had the better offer. As long as it didn’t rain, the floor would probably be as comfortable as the bed. 

There came an awkward battle of politeness, where Blair insisted that he didn’t want to put Jim out and Jim insisted that he didn’t mind. In the end, Jim went to the doorway of the hut and removed the skin which covered the opening. He threw it at Blair and then lay down on the bed, complete with sleeping bag. 

“Happy?” Jim asked. 

“Ecstatic,” Blair answered. He glanced at the door, “Though I’m not sure if my exhibitionist streak is up to it.” 

Blair held his serious expression for all of two seconds before he started laughing. For a moment, Jim had thought that Blair seriously intended to sleep with him. On the plus side, the dream fix seemed to be holding. Yesterday, that joke would have sent Jim running for the hills. 

"Go to sleep, chief," Jim instructed. 

“Goodnight, Jim.” 

Jim lay down on his bed, tucked into his sleeping bag. On the ground beside him, Blair shifted around a bit, trying to get comfortable. When he finally settled, Jim found himself listening anyway. Now, he picked up the steady beat of Blair’s heartbeat, letting the gentle rhythm lull him like a lullaby. 

***

Blair opened his eyes to the blue jungle. Jim was standing on the other side of a clearing, looking as confused as Blair felt. 

“I didn’t drink any tea,” Blair said. 

"Me neither." 

“Is this telepathic dream thing going to be a lasting effect?” Blair asked. “I’ve heard of cultures using drugs to heighten spiritual or mystical experiences, but I would like to just sleep.” 

"This hasn’t happened to me before,” Jim said. “The only times I’ve entered the spirit world have been when lead on spirit visions by Incacha.” 

Blair looked around, seeing movement in the trees. The wolf prowled around the edge of the clearing, the jaguar mirroring it. The two animals circled through the trees, eyes on each other and on the two men. Neither animal seemed particularly threatening. They were just watching. 

“Last time we woke up when we shook hands,” Blair said. 

The two of them came closer, walking into the centre of the clearing. They clasped hands. 

The only thing that happened was that the two animals emerged from the trees. They were still circling the edge of the clearing just closer in now. Jim was watching them too, clearly apprehensive. 

“Maybe we missed something last time,” Jim said. “Something to do with the animals.” 

The jaguar reversed the direction of its pacing, circling around towards the wolf. When they met, the two animals sniffed at each other. The wolf was nuzzling into the fur at the jaguar’s neck. The jaguar nuzzled in return. It was like they were in heat. 

Blair found himself standing closer to Jim, heart beating faster. He felt slightly flushed, aware of Jim so close, just a breath away. Jim’s hand, warm and rough, was working its way up Blair’s arm. Jim was sniffing, breathing in Blair’s scent. Blair found himself turning away from the nuzzling animals, leaning in towards Jim, head tilted up. Their eyes met, eyes dark with desire. 

“No!” 

Blair pulled away. It took physical effort to step back from Jim, to ignore the animals’ desire that was somehow filling him. The sick, guilty filling was filling him again, made all the worse for the fact that he’d been through this before. 

“Blair,” Jim took a step towards him, reaching out a hand. Blair stepped back. He couldn’t let Jim touch him. There was something electric in it, something that was trying to pull the two of them together. 

“Not again,” Blair said. “I’m not going to let it happen again.” 

Jim looked confused for a moment, then understanding crowded out the dark desire. 

“It’s not like last time,” Jim said. 

“Yes it is!” Blair jabbed an arm in the direction of the spirit animals. “They want this. They’re doing this. It’s not us.” 

“They’re part of us.” 

“And what happens when we wake up and you hate me again for taking advantage?” 

"I want this as much as you do." 

“But will you still want it when we’re awake?” Blair asked. 

All Jim could say was, “I don’t know.” 

"We need to stop this. We need to wake up before we do something we'll regret." 

“What if we still want this when we’re awake?” Jim asked. 

Blair looked at him, properly, again. Jim had been joining in his joking about being married, but what if it was more than a joke to him? Blair hadn’t really let himself think about it. Jim was an army guy and they had their stupid rules against being gay. He’d just assumed Jim wouldn’t be interested, particularly after what had happened in that first vision, and he’d put it out of his mind. Now the thought returned and wouldn’t shift: was he interested in Jim that way? 

“If we’re still attracted to each other when we’re awake,” Blair said, “then at least we’ll be awake and hopefully not under the influence of any weird tea. Then it’s up to us.” 

“Then we’d better wake up,” Jim said. He closed the gap between them, lowered his head to kiss Blair. It was just a short, chaste peck on the lips. 

Then the jungle vanished. 

***

Blair opened his eyes to the darkness inside the hut. He turned his head towards the bed, towards Jim. It was too dark to see anything much but he could hear a rustle of movement. Blair sat up and looked at the dark shadow. 

“Are you awake?” Blair asked in a faint whisper. 

“Yeah,” came Jim’s reply. 

"And?" Blair asked. 

The rustle of movement came again and then Jim was beside him. Blair still couldn’t really see him, but he could feel Jim’s warmth. A hand cupped the back of his neck, tilting Blair’s head up. 

“I want this,” Jim said. Each word sent warm breath over Blair. Blair had never wanted anything as much as he wanted this. He was the one that closed the distance. 

Their lips met. The animal desire filled them both. Blair grabbed at Jim, working his hands up underneath Jim’s shirt. Their mouths fought to taste everything in each other, while Jim’s hands went for Blair’s flies, working without fumbling despite the darkness. 

All that mattered in the world was each other. Blair clung to Jim, feeling strong muscles beneath warm skin, knowing deep into his soul that this was right.


	10. Day Six

The first thing Jim became aware of was a heartbeat close by. When he opened his eyes, he was lying on the floor of his hut, tangled up with Blair. They were warm and sticky on the dirt floor, the curtain draped over them both. The scent of sex and sweat floated into his nostrils. Jim indulged himself for a moment in admiring Blair’s sleeping face in the golden, dawn light. 

It was hard to believe they were here like this, after the last few days. Not so long ago, the thought would have appalled him, but he couldn’t even begin to regret it now. He wanted this. He wanted Blair. Maybe this would turn out to be some after-effect of the drug but right now having Blair in his arms seemed perfect. He wasn’t going to let himself regret it. 

He just hoped Blair didn’t regret it either. 

Blair stirred against him. 

“Morning,” Jim said quietly. 

Blair blinked open his eyes, a confused smile settling onto his face. 

“So I didn’t dream that?” he asked. 

“Not all of it.” 

Blair glanced at the open doorway of the hut, at the scattered clothes around them, and then he risked a look under the curtain and made a face. 

“I’m rather sticky,” he said. Jim laughed. He knew by feel that he was too. They’d fallen asleep right after they’d made love. Jim wasn’t sure he was any more keen than Blair on putting on clothes while still covered in cum. 

He had a pot of water near the door of his hut. It was standard practice to make sure there was always a supply of drinking water. They managed, with the aid of a drinking bowl and a very tattered washcloth, to achieve something resembling cleanliness. 

“We can get properly clean in the river,” Jim said, “but I don’t feel like walking there naked.” 

“No. I think I’ve had enough of being naked in public.” 

They pulled on their clothes, dirty enough from wearing them day and night in the jungle, and Jim led the way to the bathing area. The tribe took their drinking water from a place up river from the village and bathed downriver, at an area where the river widened out with shallow banks. The area was deserted and Jim took a moment to listen to the surrounding trees to make sure that they weren’t going to be disturbed before he stripped off his clothes. Blair hesitated a moment. 

“There’s only us here,” Jim assured him. 

Blair stripped off his clothes, avoiding looking at Jim. There was a flush of embarrassment on his cheeks. Despite what had happened last night, there was still something awkward about this. Jim waded into the water until he was chest-deep. Make it harder to see the things that were causing that blush. 

The water was warm enough and he’d become used to cleaning off in the river, though Jim sometimes had fantasies about how showers. Blair joined him, scrubbing himself under the water level. 

“There’s something I’ve been meaning to ask you,” Blair said, “and I’ve been struggling to find a way to do it that won’t make me sound crazy if I’m wrong.” 

“Just ask.” 

“How good is your eyesight?” 

Jim hesitated, wondering what Blair had noticed. Had he realised that Jim had been able to see him perfectly fine last night, despite the darkness of the hut? Jim wasn’t sure how he felt about someone else knowing about his abilities. It was weird, since the entire tribe knew he was their Sentinel, but this was a different world. Confiding in Blair would bring the two worlds crashing together. So Jim hedged. 

“I’ve always had good eyesight. Why?” 

“It’s just... there were these stories about tribal protectors and... never mind.” 

Jim hesitated a moment longer, thinking about last night. They’d shared dreams. They’d shared fears. They’d shared each other’s bodies. Was it really such a big step to share this one thing? 

“My eyesight is... better than good.” 

“And your other senses? Hearing? Smell?” 

“All better than good.” 

“Wow,” Blair said. “There was this book I read. I found it in a second hand sale and most contemporary anthropologists have forgotten about it. Richard Burton, the anthropologist, not the actor, spent some time in this part of the world and he wrote about how the local tribes all had a protector, someone whose senses were more powerful than ordinary people. I fell in love with the stories and spent a lot of time trying to find other accounts to see if there was any evidence to corroborate what Burton wrote. I never thought I’d meet a real, live Sentinel.” 

Blair was talking so fast that it was a wonder he found time to breathe. Jim listened with amusement, but also something deeper. Here was someone who understood him, who understood what was going on with him. Jim had learned a lot from Incacha but the language barrier could cause problems when discussing being a Sentinel in any depth. 

“What gave it away?” Jim asked, curious. 

“The zone out. Burton described them, saying that when a Sentinel got too focused on one sense, he might block out all others. He usually had someone with him to pull him out.” 

“A guide.” 

“Exactly,” Blair was still grinning. 

“Incacha said that you would be my Guide. He said that this was ‘meant to be.’” Jim made air quotes when saying the last bit. He didn’t believe in fate or all this mystical stuff. That said, it was getting harder to be cynical about it when he kept having psychic dreams. 

“Maybe that’s why we’ve been drawn to each other,” Blair said. 

That stung a little. Jim didn’t want to be acting like this because of some mystical pull. He wanted this to be real. 

“Maybe I’m drawn to you because you’re gorgeous,” he suggested. Blair started to protest, but Jim waded through the water until he was right in front of him and muffled his protests with a kiss. 

He’d have liked to take this further, but someone was approaching through the undergrowth. From the clumsy approach, breaking twigs and rustling branches, Jim guessed it wasn’t one of the Chopec. He told Blair and they hurried out of the river to get dressed. 

They just about had all their clothes on when Mr Politeness himself stumbled from the trees. He shot the pair of them a poisonous glare. 

“You done here?” he asked. 

“We were just leaving,” Jim said. 

“Good.” He waited until Jim and Blair were well on the way back to the village before he started shedding clothes, muttering about the “fucking faggots” and how it was no wonder Blair wasn’t trying to get them home when he was shacking up with a degenerate disgrace to the army uniform. 

“Nice guy,” Jim muttered, and summed up what he’d heard for Blair’s benefit. Blair didn’t seem at all concerned with the man’s venomous words. Instead, he was excited by Jim’s abilities. 

“You can hear him all the way from the river? Have you done any tests to determine your range? Really we should do that in a controlled environment, but we could still come up with a rough approximation.” 

“Hey!” Jim protested. “I’m not your lab rat!” 

“Sorry. It’s just, I’ve imagined this for so long.” 

“I’m getting that. Come on. We should get back to the village and get some breakfast. Then I need to head up to the pass; I’ve been neglecting my duties.” 

“Want me to come with you? If I’m to be your Guide, I should stick with you.” 

“No, I’m fine. Besides, if I zone out again, someone can come to fetch you.” 

Jim didn’t say that he needed some time to think. They’d just fallen into the relationship and now were joking like an old married couple, but Jim needed to figure out what this meant for him. Up until a few days ago, he’d been straight. He needed to do some serious re-evaluation of his self-image. Besides, Incacha wanted to teach Blair how to be a Shaman. He’d be busy enough.


	11. Day Seven

Jim was up in the pass, the dense jungle above the village. Here the tribe kept a constant watch for guerrilla actions. He’d much rather be down in the village with Blair, learning about his knew partner. Unfortunately, he had a job to do and besides, Blair was spending the day with Incacha, which would be interesting since neither of them spoke the other’s language. 

Jim had his duties to attend to as Sentinel, sitting up on the ridge where he could survey the jungle for miles, picking out the movements of his tribe, of the creatures in the trees, or the wind in the branches. He could even see the crash site of the chopper that had brought him here well over a year ago. 

He wasn’t sure how he felt about Blair knowing his secret. A part of him had always feared going back to the States like this. What would people say? What would people think? Would they call him a freak and lock him up in a lab like a science experiment? Seeing Blair’s reaction, Jim knew he couldn’t be normal again, but Blair made it seem like a good thing. 

Much as he’d like to be getting to know Blair better, the solitude was probably a good thing. It let him think about that enthusiastic anthropologist and what was going to happen. They were connected now. He didn’t need Incacha to tell him that. He felt it. Psychic dreams were a part of it, but there was more. Jim knew he couldn’t leave Blair. They were linked, partners. For good or bad. 

A sound brought Jim out of his thoughts. He sought it out, eyes scanning for the source. He saw it, not in the jungle but above it. A helicopter. Jim focused. It looked military. Apache, probably. He’d find out for sure soon: it was heading this way. 

Jim called out to one of the tribe who was nearby, telling him to run to the village and tell Incacha that a metal bird was coming. 

Jim waited long enough to be sure of the chopper’s destination. It was heading towards where his team had been shot down. No doubt it had picked out the old wreckage and was going to investigate. Jim left his vantage point, running along the jungle floor towards the site. Between the trees, others of the tribe were moving too. He could see more in the distance, already surrounding the clearing. 

When the first gunshots rang out, he increased his pace, racing full speed through the trees. 

“Cease fire! Cease!” he heard the voice above the noise and the gunshots went silent. “Hold your fire! They could have killed us already if they wanted to.” 

Jim crested a rise in the land and took in the sight. The warriors of the tribe were surrounding the clearing, some on the ground and some in the trees. A group of soldiers were in the middle of the clearing, trying to find cover behind the chopper wreckage or their own aircraft. Special Forces, he saw, from the patches on their uniforms. 

Jim turned to the nearest warriors, _“Do not attack them.”_ He wondered if he should try explaining that these men were from the same organisation that sent him, but he would only be able to say it in terms of tribes and peoples. He wasn’t sure he’d be able to explain it in such a way that they would understand correctly. Instead, he just walked down into the clearing, hoping that the team on the ground were well trained enough not to get jumpy and shoot him. 

He shouldered his gun headed to the one who’d given the order to hold fire. 

“Captain James Ellison,” he introduced himself. “You my relief?”

“Your relief?” 

Jim summarised his mission, “We were ordered to contact the local tribes and organise a militia. These men and I have held the Chopec pass for over a year.” 

“Captain Ellison,” the man said, “you were presumed dead. The mission was aborted.” 

Jim felt something go cold inside him. Presumed dead. Did everyone back home think that? His dad? His brother? He’d been abandoned in the jungle and they hadn’t even bothered to check if he was alive. 

It wasn’t really that much of a surprise, but it still hurt to hear it in words. 

“Then why are you here?” he asked. 

“A group of civilians went missing in this area. We believe they were shot down by guerrilla forces. My team was sent to investigate when we saw this crash site.” 

Of course. Military forces could be lost and it was just unfortunate, but civilian disappearances were bad press. 

“Are any others of your team alive?” the man asked. 

“No. But the civilians are. They’re at the local village.” 

“You found them?” 

“Like I said, we’ve been guarding this pass. I’ll take you to them.” 

***

Learning to be a Shaman would be a lot easier if Blair could understand the language. He could pick out the occasional word, but mostly his communication with Incacha was in the form of mine. They were collecting plants from the jungle, gathering leaves, roots and flowers. As they worked, Incacha would try to teach Blair the purpose of the plant. Currently he was indicating a bush with reddish leaves and acting out being sick. Blair wasn’t sure if that meant that the leaves would make a person sick or that they were helping out when a person was sick. Either way, they gathered up a large handful and tied them together with chord. 

Blair added the leaves to the collection he was carrying in an animal skin bag. He’d been shown dozens of different plants already and wasn’t feeling too confident of his ability to remember any of this tomorrow. Still, he followed Incacha as they went further into the jungle. 

They were plucking some foul-smelling mushrooms when a voice called through the jungle. A young man was hurrying through the trees, yelling Incacha’s name. Incacha called back and the man hurried over, talking rapidly. Blair wasn’t able to understand any of what passed between them; they were talking too quickly. It was obvious that something important was happening though. 

Incacha gestured for Blair to follow and ran back towards the village. Blair ran after him, clutching his bag of assorted plants. He arrived back to find the rest of the university group being herded together. They looked bewildered and scared. They all looked towards Blair. 

“What the hell’s going on?” asked Ashley. 

“I have no idea,” Blair answered. 

They all found out a moment later, when a group of men were led into the village by Jim. Men in military uniform, speaking English. 

“Thank God!” Adrian said, shaking the hand of Captain Matthis, who Jim explained had been sent on the rescue mission. 

It was clear that they were expected to pack up and head for home. All of them. 

Jim had disappeared as soon as he’d introduced the captain. Blair tracked him down in Incacha’s hut. They were arguing in the local language. 

“What’s going on?” Blair asked. 

“We’re leaving,” Jim said. He pushed past Blair and out of the hut. Incacha called something after him, anger written on his face. 

Blair hurried after Jim. 

“What did he say to you?” Blair asked. 

“He said he can’t believe I’m abandoning my duty,” Jim answered. “He says that I’m the Sentinel of the Chopec tribe and that my place is here. He says I should stay.” 

They reached Jim’s hut, ducking inside. Jim started gathering up his belongings, rolling up the sleeping bag and packing away the rest of the items into a military-issue backpack. 

“Do you want to stay?” Blair asked. 

Jim sighed. He was crouched on the floor, surrounded by the remnants of the life he’d made for himself here. He didn’t meet Blair’s gaze. 

“My family think I’m dead,” he said. “They’ve already mourned me. I could stay here. But I miss home. Friends, places I used to take for granted.” He turned and gave a grin, adding, “Showers.” 

Blair managed a smile at the joke, but it was clear that this was a serious moment. 

“It wouldn’t have to be forever,” Blair said. “We could go back to America. You could see your family again but you could always come back. If you wanted to.” 

Jim smiled again. This time it seemed genuine. “You’re right,” he said. “I could come back someday.”


	12. Day Eight

Jim sat in a chilly office and tried to ignore the sound of a city beyond the walls. Cars and people, far too many people, were pressing into his awareness via his heightened hearing. He’d never realised how much noise a city could produce. 

He must have looked dazed to the colonel interviewing him, constantly distracted by things inaudible to anyone else. Jim gave an account of his experiences in the jungle, leaving out the part about becoming a Sentinel. He stuck to what had happened to his team and how he’d achieved his mission parameters afterwards. Then came the summary of the arrival of the civilians. Again, Jim stuck to straight-forward facts and left out all the weirdness to do with the spirit world. 

He went through everything in the official debriefing, then the colonel took Jim aside to his office. Jim knew that this couldn’t be good, as he was herded away from the official records and sat down in this private space. 

“One of the civilians,” the colonel said, “stated that you had entered a relationship with one of the others.” 

Jim knew which civilian had said that. He'd heard Adrian, Mr Politeness as ever, ranting about being stuck in the middle of nowhere with a much of faggots. Jim tried to keep his anger off his face and gave the story he’d agreed with Blair. 

“The Shaman of the tribe held a welcome ceremony for Sandburg involving what turned out to be hallucinogenic tea. He didn’t realise until he’d already drunk some and he was... not in full control of his actions. He kissed me and the locals took that as a sign that we were together. We figured there was a rescue mission on its way, so it was easier not to argue.” 

The colonel leaned forward, elbows on the desk, fingers laced in front of him. His face was grave. 

“Captain Ellison, you must realise that this doesn’t look good for you.” 

“Because of what happened when a civilian got high?” 

“Look, as far as I’m concerned, whatever happened between you and this Sandburg guy should be between you, but we’ve got regulations to follow and someone who clearly doesn’t like you kicking up a storm. He won’t let us ignore this.” 

Before now, Jim had considered himself completely straight. He’d not given much thought to the whole Don’t Ask Don’t Tell nonsense. Now it looked like it could come and bite him in the ass. 

“What do you think will happen?” Jim asked, his forced calm getting more difficult by the moment. 

“Most likely a dishonourable discharge,” the colonel said. “There’s no evidence apart from your word and this civilian pilot, but even if you’re allowed to stay, it will be a stain on your record.” 

“So what do you suggest?” 

“Hand in your resignation. Say that after your time in Peru, you need to spend some time with your family and enjoying being back on home soil, all the usual stuff. We can sooth some ruffled feathers with this pilot, hint that you were pushed.” 

“Which is the truth,” Jim said. He was having to remind himself that punching a superior officer was up there with sharing a hut with a man in terms of future career prospects. 

“This way, you’ll get to leave as a hero. It’ll look like your choice and you can find a career that doesn’t have bigotry written into the rules.” 

Jim saw it then. He saw the sympathy on the man’s face, the annoyance at the situation he found himself in. The colonel didn’t want to push Jim out. He just didn’t see a better option. 

“Thank you, sir,” Jim said. 

“When the army realises we’re not living in the dark ages anymore,” the colonel said, “I hope to see you back.” 

Jim managed a smile, but there was no joy behind it, “Thank you, sir.” 

***

Outside a military office in Cascade, Blair was answering questions for reporters, a camera aimed at his face, and he was struggling to think of anything but how ridiculous he must look. The army guys had debriefed him and then let him take a shower, but the only clothes they’d been able to lend him were sweats and a t-shirt that were far too big. He looked like he was drowning inside the cloth. It matched perfectly with the portrait the reporters were trying to paint of him, as a lost geek who was rescued by the big, strong military man. 

Blair tried not to feel insulted and kept the smile plastered on his face. 

After a few minutes, the door opened and Jim emerged, instantly drawing the attention of all of the reporters. He answered their questions politely and succinctly. His face had a smile plastered on it too, a little too broad and a little too constant. Blair waited as Jim talked about his delight to be back home and his plans to spend some time with his family. Blair felt his heart lurch. He hadn’t asked Jim about his family. Blair had to hope he was talking about brothers and sisters, not a wife and kids. 

Eventually, Jim managed to disentangle himself from the web of reporters and he headed for Blair. 

“Come on,” Jim muttered. They headed along the street, camera flashes behind them. Blair was acutely aware of the deliberate distance between them. 

Jim ducked into the nearest coffee shop. Then he hesitated. It only took Blair a moment to realise why. 

Blair walked up to the counter and placed the order. Thankfully, he hadn’t lost his wallet or passport or anything like that during his adventures in the jungle. The situation must be difficult for Jim, who’d been presumed dead. Until now, Blair hadn’t considered how that would have impact on his finances. He asked Jim about it while they were waiting for their coffee. 

“Apparently my dad got all my stuff,” Jim said, “so I should get back anything he didn’t chuck out, and the army owes me a year’s back pay, but I need to fill out some forms to become officially not-dead and I’ll need to reopen my bank accounts.” 

"Sounds like a lot of paperwork before you’ll be able to buy coffee.” 

“Yeah. I should have stayed in the jungle.” Jim took a sip from the cup the barista put on the counter. He closed his eyes and made murmuring noises of appreciation as he rolled the coffee over his tongue. “Maybe not,” he said. 

They headed for a table in the corner and they sat across from each other, nursing their cups of coffee. Things hadn’t felt this awkward between them since after the first adventure in the spirit world. 

“What’s bothering you?” Blair asked. 

Jim drew a long breath before he spoke, “I have to resign.” 

“Why?” Blair asked. 

“Because of the Don’t Ask Don’t Tell rules. Because of that asshole pilot saying that we slept together.” 

“Can you fight this?” 

Jim shook his head, “Not when I technically did break their stupid rule.” 

“But you were officially dead at the time. Surely there’s an exemption for that?” 

Jim gave a snort of laughter, “I don’t think the army rules have a zombie clause built into them.” 

Now it was Blair’s turn to laugh, “Oh, but they really should!” 

The moment passed and seriousness fell across the table again. 

“So what happens now?” Blair asked. 

"I don’t know. I’ve lost my apartment and I’ve not got any money for a hotel until I get the bank mess sorted out. I suppose I could go stay with my dad for a few days.” He made a face at that. 

“You can stay at my place,” Blair offered. 

“That wasn’t me asking for charity.” 

“No, but this is me offering it. You shared you hut with me, I’m just returning the favour.” 

So, once their coffees were drunk, Blair showed Jim towards his place. Blair was looking forward to getting into some clothes that actually fit him. They reached the warehouse that Blair called home, Jim looking with suspicion at the building. Whatever polite statement Jim might have made was erased the second Blair opened the door. 

"What the hell is that smell?” Jim asked. 

A putrid stench wafted out of the warehouse at them. 

“Sorry,” Blair said. “Something must have got caught in the traps while I was away.” 

“Do you have mice?” Jim looked horrified. 

“No. Not mice.” 

“Rats?” the look of horror intensified. 

"No, rats are small. These things," Blair held his hands about a foot apart, seeing Jim’s eyes go even wider. 

Blair left Jim outside for a minute while he grabbed a trash bag. Rather than try to remove the now squishy body of the rat, he just shoved the whole trap into the bag and went to dispose of it outside. When he returned, Jim had found a can of air freshener and was busy spraying the entire can over everything. 

"I can't believe you live here," Jim said. 

“What? Where else would I get this much space?” Blair gestured around the expansive warehouse, which was dotted with his furniture. He had everything a man could need, including a kitchen area in one corner and a little shower room in the back. There was very little food in the kitchen area, just a few tins and dried items. Fortunately, there was a small selection of take-out menus. Blair left Jim to place an order while he went to take another shower and change into some clothes that actually fit him. 

As they were relaxing on the couch, pizza spread on the coffee table, a basketball game on the TV, their conversation returned to the future. Blair wasn’t sure he wanted to tempt things. He wanted to just enjoy this moment, having Jim here beside him, but there were things that couldn’t be ignored. 

“I guess I’ll need to find a new job,” Jim said. “The problem is the only real skill set I have is shooting people.” 

“What are you talking about? You’ve got enhanced senses beyond the dreams of most ordinary people.” 

“Yes, but I can’t put that on my resume.” 

"Why not? In my research I’ve found cases where people with a heightened sense of smell have been employed by perfume companies or,” Blair thought of Jim’s delight at his first taste of coffee in over a year, “in coffee companies.” 

Jim shook his head, “I’m not sure that’s my sort of work.” 

“How about police work?” Blair suggested. “You’d be a walking forensics lab.” 

It was like a light had gone on behind Jim’s eyes, “Police. Yeah. I could do that.”


	13. Day Nine

Blair was jerked awake, heart pounding, by the realisation he wasn’t alone. Someone was in here with him. He rolled over, saw Jim’s face pressed against the pillow, and felt tension slip away. 

Jim’s eyes shot open, gleaming in the dim light. Presumably he’d been woken by Blair’s sudden movement. He extracted a hand from the covers and rested it on Blair’s arm. 

“What’s wrong?” Jim asked. 

“Sorry. I didn’t mean to wake you. It just took me a moment to remember why there was a man in bed with me.” 

“Your heart’s still racing.” 

“You can hear my heart? That’s a bit... creepy.” 

Blair wasn’t so much bothered that Jim could hear his heart as that he might correctly deduce the reason for it. Blair’s heart rate hadn’t dropped after his shock because he’d realised that Jim was lying right next to him and that he was probably naked under the covers. 

"Sorry,” said Jim. “Maybe it’s because of the spirit plane stuff, but I seem to... tune in to you. I’ll try and stop if you want.” 

Blair knew that he ought to feel creeped out or scared. Having a Sentinel listening in on his heartbeat was veering a little too close to stalker territory. But they’d shared dreams in the jungle. This was significantly less extreme. 

“It’s OK,” Blair said. 

“Are you sure? I don’t want things to be weird between us.” 

Blair started laughing. Given how they'd begun this relationship, it was a bit late to worry about things being weird. Jim didn't seem to appreciate Blair’s reaction. 

“I’ll give you something to laugh at,” he said. 

He reached under the covers, hands finding Blair’s ribs and starting a merciless attack of tickling. Blair shrieked and laughed, squirming, trying to wriggle away from those torturous fingers. Jim moved, sitting astride him, pinning him down, so he could continue his assault. Blair struggled, laughing and squealing, until he could barely breathe. 

When Jim stopped his tickle attack, Jim was pressed down on top of him, skin against skin. Both were breathing hard, Jim’s warm breath ghosting against Blair’s face. Blair felt the stirrings of excitement inside him and felt an equal reaction from where Jim’s crotch was pressed against his. They smiled at each other in the dim light, Jim lowering his head to meet Blair in a kiss. 

Blair’s alarm clock went off. 

Blair gave an inarticulate groan of frustration. Jim flung out an arm, finding the clock on the bedside and silencing the irritating beep. Then there was a moment’s silence and Blair was acutely aware of Jim’s naked body pressed against his. 

“I should get up,” Blair said. “I need to get to the university.” 

“How urgently?” Jim asked. 

Blair smiled, “We’ll have to be quick.” 

***

After the glorious beginning, Jim’s day had quickly fallen into tedium. He’d had to go to the bank and fill out a collection of forms, then fill out more forms for the army, then fill out some forms for the government. Then he went to the Police Academy and filled out some more forms to apply for training there. He was starting to feel he might go nuts and murder the next person who handed him a form. 

He’d also gone to see his dad. That had been the most awkward conversation they’d had since Jim had learned the truth about sex. His dad was clearly glad that Jim wasn’t dead, but neither of them had known what to say about it. Jim had raised the subject of his money, which had gone to his dad on his supposed death. His dad agreed to transfer it back as soon as Jim’s bank account was up and running, and he’d handed Jim some notes to tide him over as a down payment. He’d hated asking his dad for money, but it was made somewhat easier because the money was technically his anyway. They’d talked about the future, with his dad hinting that a job in his company was always a possibility. Jim was almost glad he’d already filled in the applications for the police; at least he didn’t need to manufacture an excuse to say no. 

Once all that was done, he still had a bit of time before Blair was due to finish at the university. Jim didn’t particularly want to go back to that rat-infested stink trap on his own, or ever again, so he bought a paper and a cup of coffee with the money he’d got from his dad, and he started circling property listings. 

A couple of hours later, he returned to the unhygienic warehouse Blair called home, carrying some take out from Wonder Burger. He’d considered buying ingredients and cooking Blair something, but he wasn’t sure he would be able to stomach anything cooked in that place when the air still smelled faintly of dead rat. 

Blair had just arrived back. He greeted Jim cheerfully and then frowned at the bag Jim held, making comments about cholesterol. 

“I haven’t had a burger in over a year,” Jim protested. That silenced Blair’s arguments. 

They ate their burgers and talked about their days. Apparently one of Blair’s professors wanted him to do a lecture on his experiences in the jungle and write a paper on the ritual Blair had been put through to make him part of the tribe. 

“I’m trying to work out how to leave about the bit about... you know... and still keep the paper scientifically valid,” Blair said. 

“I’m sure no one will complain if you’re vague about what you saw under the influence of the tea.” 

“True, but I want to be accurate. It’s not good practice as a scientist to leave out key pieces of information.” 

Jim shrugged, “I’m sure you’ll figure something out.” 

"So how was your day?" Blair asked. 

Jim briefly summarised his time with his dad, then he said, “And I think I may have found an apartment.” 

Blair’s attention locked firmly onto Jim, with a look of shock and something else. Sadness? Surely he couldn’t like this rat-infested warehouse that much? 

“Already?” Blair asked. He certainly didn’t sound happy about the idea. 

“I’ve booked a viewing for tomorrow but it sounds good. It’s over on Prospect so it’s the right side of town for you to get to the university and between us we should be able to afford it.” 

“Oh, you mean for both of us.” 

And it clicked. Suddenly Jim understood the distress on Blair’s face. Blair had thought Jim was looking for an apartment just for him and would be leaving Blair here. Jim realised he might have overstepped a boundary in just assuming that they’d be living together. After all, they’d only known each other a short while and this was a huge step. But he hadn’t even stopped to think about it. 

Suddenly Jim felt awkward. 

“If you want to get an apartment together,” he said. “We don’t have to.” 

“No. I’d like to. It’s just...” Blair trailed off. 

“Sudden.” 

“Yeah.” 

Jim took a breath and tried to get his thoughts in order, “I like you, Blair, and I could do with your help to deal with the Sentinel thing. More than that, I feel connected to you.” 

"I guess the telepathic dreams might have something to do with that.” 

“Probably.” 

Blair reached across the table, his hand finding Jim’s. Their fingers twined together. 

“I want to see where this goes,” Blair said. “I feel the connection too and I want to try and make this work. I’ll take a look at this place at Prospect, but you should be aware my funds are limited.” 

“We’ll figure it out,” Jim said. Then he grinned, “Besides, we are sort of married, according to Incacha.” 

Blair laughed, “I guess we are.”


End file.
